In Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka’s genre-bending and Booker Prize winning novel Maali Almeida wakes up one day to find himself dead. Or maybe he's in dream caused by one of those "silly pills" his friend Jaki gives him. Soon he finds himself in a waiting room in the In-Between, where he has seven moons (days) to prepare to move into The Light, or not.
Maali's problem with this is he realizes he was murdered, but doesn’t know why or by whom. His other problem is that as a war photographer, a gambler, and a closeted gay man in Sri Lanka in 1990 there are countless possible suspects: the army, the government, private security forces, Indian Peace Keepers, NGO workers, communists, Tamil and Sinhalese nationalists, not to mention ex lovers, and those he owes money.
So begins a story that's part noir fiction, part political thriller, and part magical realist portrayal of an afterworld populated by a variety of spirits, ghosts, and monsters with widely divergent agendas. Among those he meets is a dead communist set on organizing a rebellion from the beyond to achieve the justice he couldn't Down There. How to do that without bodies or voices to influence the living is unclear.
Seven Moons is the opposite of a page turner. You don't race through looking for clues to whodunit. Instead you marvel at every sentence as the author creates wonderfully imagined tale moving back and forth between the living and the dead. The parallels between the two realms call to mind the ancient idea, As Above, So Below.
By the time Maali's killer, and manner of death, are revealed it really doesn't matter much. In reading this book, it's in the journey not the destination that you find your reward.