Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka wins Booker Prize 2022 for his novel ‘Seven Moons of Maali Almeida'

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The “Seven Moons of Maali Almeida'' by Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka has won the Booker prize 2022.  He is the second Sri Lankan to win the prestigious literature award .The Booker award was presented to Shehan Karunatilaka by Camilla, the United Kingdom’s Queen Consort on 17 October 2022.

The ‘Seven Moons of Maali Almeida; novel is about a photographer who wakes up within a week after death and asks his friends to find his photos and expose the brutality of the civil war. 

The writer said he decided in 2009 to write "a ghost story where the dead could offer their perspective" after the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, "when there was a raging debate over how many civilians died and whose fault it was during the civil war".

The winner gets £50,000(British Pound Sterling) as prize money while the other five shortlisted writers are awarded prize money of £2,500 each.

Booker Prize 

• The Booker Prize which was earlier called Man Booker was established by a British multinational company Booker McConnell in 1968. 
•  The first prize was given in 1969. PH Newby was the first winner of the prize in 1969 for his wok “Something to Answer For”. 
• It is awarded to the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland   in the same year which is considered for the prize.  
•  The first Indian to win this prize was Arundhati Roy for her book: The God of Small Things, in 1997.
• Other Indian winners are; Kiran Desai for her book The Inheritance of Loss in 2006, and Aravind Adiga for his book The White Tiger in 2008.

International Booker Prize 

• It is also given every year by the Booker foundation. 
• But unlike the Booker prize it is given to a single book that is translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland in the same year which is considered for the prize.
• Geetanjali Shree became the first Indian author to win the International Booker Prize 2022. Her Hindi novel ‘Tomb of Sand’ (रेत समाधि)won the prize for her.