The Booker Prize 2022 has gone to a The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, a Sri Lankan writer also known for his rock songs, screenplays and travel stories.
Key points
- The novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is a satire based in war-torn Sri Lanka, surrounding the life of a war photographer who goes on a journalistic mission in his afterlife.
- Karunatilaka will receive £50,000 as prize money.
- The ceremony was held at the Roundhouse, a popular concert venue in London, and attended by Camilla, the Queen Consort of the United Kingdom, and singer-songwriter Dua Lipa.
- The prestigious £50,000 prize, for a single work of fiction published in the UK in English, also gives the other five writers on the shortlist £2,500 each.
- The Booker Prize is awarded annually to a book published in English in the United Kingdom or Ireland.
- The International Booker Prize — its 2022 edition won by Geetanjali Shree for her Hindi novel, Tomb of Sand, the first Indian-language work to win the prize — is awarded to a work of translation published in the same territories.
