Travel, it turns out, was the basis of his photojournalism career when he was “photographing captured arsenals for Major Raja Udugampola, covering the Anuradhapura bomb blast with Andy McGowan from Newsweek, and beating the losing streak at Pegasus Casino.” It serves Maali right to navigate the afterlife with travelling ghosts. So, they enter the dreams of key stakeholders to sway them and do their bidding and even collaborate with vengeful, mythological spirits, aatmas and pretas of the underworld. After all, they are limited by the laws of physics and just that–ghosts. What to do?”īut the travelling ghosts can only do so much to influence the course of the war. But mistakes happen, no? Especially in government offices. If the writer wants to highlight the manic energy in bureaucratic offices, he can simply have an old aunty tell Maali in the visa office for the dead: “ Not saying your fault. If the writer wants to show the bleeding hospitals of Sri Lanka, we are assisted by numerous characters dead and dying there. As down below, so above–the office is a mess of half-dead souls falling on each other, refusing to queue up in a single line. He wakes up in a visa office that is a bardo of sorts, helping people transition from the living world to the dead. Maali is dead and yet alive, thus giving readers access to all those he comes into contact with.

The novel’s intelligent use of ghosts as a narrative tool to expose the many nuances of the war is truly innovative. And yet our character, Maali, is acutely aware of what is at stake-as governments and entire communities crash and burn, Sri Lanka’s visually arresting folklore comes to the rescue.

The 7 moons of maali