SHEHAN KARUNATILAKA - Booker Prize-winning Author of The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

What happens when we die? What happens to our memories and consciousness when our bodies cease to be?  In the end, is it the things we did and the people we loved that give our lives meaning?

Shehan Karunatilaka is the multi-award winning author. He is known for his novels dealing with the history, politics, and folklore of his home country of Sri Lanka. He won the Commonwealth Book Prize and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for his debut novel, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, and the Booker Prize 2022 for his second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. In addition to novels, he has written rock songs, screenplays and travel stories. Born in Colombo, he studied in New Zealand and has lived and worked in London, Amsterdam, and Singapore.

"I was very inspired to know that humans are not the be-all and end-all. We're just one state. But you could be in this state of consciousness, this kind of godly state, even a demonic state, but also the fact that all living creatures had souls and were affected by karma. And this is something we tend to forget, especially because animals are so tasty and therefore we have to justify slaughtering them on such a mass scale. So we want to believe that they don't count. Or they are somehow lesser souls than us. The cat doesn't believe that it's a pet. The cat believes they are the center of the universe. I'm sure the cockroach believes that they are the center of the universe, just as we do. And back to the thing you said: how our bodies inform our view. I think every living creature suffers and experiences joy. And therefore it's convenient for us to say that certain things don't have souls...whatever the soul is."

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Photo credit: David Parry/Booker Prize Foundation