Here are brief reviews of five notable novels in this twenty-fourth week of the year.
Novel. “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida”, by Shehan Karunatilaka
Switching to the afterlife to better understand the atrocities of earthly life: this is what The Seven Moons of Maali Almeidaby the Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka (born in 1975), to report on the civil war which bloodied his country from 1983 to 2009. It is in the” Between two “, antechamber of paradise (or hell) where we meet Maali Almeida. This war photographer, discreet homosexual and inveterate gambler before his assassination in 1989, at the height of the fighting, had one week to solve the mystery of his death and, above all, find a way to make public the photos he took. took place at the beginning of the conflict, during the pogroms against the Tamils, in Colombo, in 1983. After which this cynical hero could “meditate on his bones”submit “at ear control” intended to make him forget his past and bathe in the “River of Births” where his soul will finally be left in peace.
As in his first novel,Chinaman (winner of the Commonwealth Prize, 2010, untranslated), where he investigated a disappearance, Shehan Karunatilaka delivers a gripping and ironic story here. Awarded in 2022 by the Booker Prize, The Seven Moons… gives the measure of the Sri Lankan conflict, “inextricable and irremediable”which was, according to its protagonist, inspired by deities including “the job is to invent problems for humanity”. Gu. D.
“The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida”, by Shehan Karunatilaka, translated from English (Sri Lanka) by Xavier Gros, Calmann-Lévy, 450 p., €23.90, digital €17 .
Also read (2023) | Article reserved for our subscribers “A passage to the North”, by Anuk Arudpragasam: ashes of mourning in Sri Lanka
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Novel. “Anatomy of a Drama”, by Gert Loschütz
On December 22, 1939, an express train traveling at full speed collided with another in the small town of Genthin, west of Berlin. It was the most terrible railway disaster on the Reichsbahn, the German railways of the time. It caused hundreds of deaths and injuries, with trains being crowded due to traffic restrictions imposed by the war effort – the invasion of Poland had taken place three months earlier. From this news item, Gert Loschütz (born in Genthin, in fact, in 1946) imagines, in Anatomy of a drama, the fate of a passenger, Carla: miraculous from the disaster, she was traveling in the company of a handsome Italian who died in the accident. At the hospital where she is treated, she says she is the wife of this Italian, even though she is engaged to Richard, a Jew who is trying to escape Germany.
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