The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

 The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, 400 pages.

Maali Almeida wakes up dead, which even by his standards is a lousy way to start the day. What's worse is that he has no idea how he got that way, or why his body is being dismembered and thrown into Beira Lake. In life he was a war photographer, an arranger of meetings, a gambler, and a closeted gay man in 1990 Colombo, so the list of people who could have potentially wanted him dead and his body disposed of isn't exactly short. His ghost has only seven days to answer these mysteries, as well as to lead the people he loves most to the photos he had tucked away to rock a nation being torn apart by civil war, terrorist activity, and government corruption.

This is a pretty depressing book. Which isn't exactly surprising given the setting, but it bears saying anyway. The protagonist is dead from the beginning, as are a whole lot of other ghosts, and it is absolutely full of gruesome and unfair deaths. It is also a higher context book than a lot of the other world literature I've been reading this year, and I do feel like there's an assumed amount of knowledge about Sri Lanka that I didn't have going in. All that being said, this is a very well constructed book. Being dead allows for a pretty wide perspective, and the fact that it was told mostly in pretty short vignettes was a great decision. I also found the mystery pretty compelling, although it wasn't quite as prominent as I might have thought it would be. Finally, I was pleasantly surprised to find this book, and Maali in particular, less misanthropic than I was afraid it would be, especially by the end. This is not a light read, but I would say it is a good one.