Queer Pages

In this episode, Pippa and Filip are discussing Booker Prize winning novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida - set in 1990 in Sri Lanka, as conflict between Sinhalese and Tamil Sri Lankans divides the country. We follow the war photographer Maali Almeida, a complicated protagonist who idealistically tries to use his photography to uncover the injustices committed during the civil war, but in his private life is far from perfect. He compulsively cheats on his partner while lying to him about his gambling addiction.

The novel starts as Maali wakes up to find that he is in the afterlife, without remembering how he died. He is given seven days in which he can travel between the afterlife and the world of the living. In that time he tries to figure out how he died, while at the same time trying to get his friends to publish some important photographs he took.