Karunanayake, assistant professor of English, spoke with The World podcast on the recent Booker Prize winner, "The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida" from Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka.
Dinidu Karunanayake, assistant professor of English, was interviewed on The World podcast from Public Radio Exchange (PRX) on what Shehan Karunatilaka’s Booker Prize win for his novel, “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida,” means for Sri Lanka.
The novel is a black comedy, murder mystery and political satire set during Sri Lanka’s civil war in the 1980s.
Karunanayake, who is Sri Lankan, said that he was overjoyed as an academic and as a post-colonial scholar to hear that his fellow countryman had won the Booker Prize.
“I teach Asian American literature, but I think it is larger than that. As a Sri Lankan living in the United States, it’s a time of dreaming. We are very much connected to what’s happening in our own country, so this is such a piece of promising news at a time of so many hopes,” Karunanayake said. “It’s also very fitting that Shehan Karunatilaka has set his story in a dream world, in a cosmology of fantastic elements. And I think we are dreaming and we are dreaming with him.”
The full segment can be found on The World’s website.