Born in 1975, Shehan Karunatilaka is the Sri Lankan author of two novels. Chinaman (2010) won the Commonwealth book prize and was declared the second-best cricket book of all time by Wisden. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is set in war-torn Sri Lanka in 1989, and is about a dead war photographer trying to find out who killed him; last month it was shortlisted for the Booker prize (the winner will be announced on 17 October). Karunatilaka lived in London and New Zealand, among other places, before returning to Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital.
Congratulations on your Booker shortlisting. Why do you think The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida appealed to the judges so much?
That’s a tough one. I’ve been writing this book for some time, and each time the prizes roll on, I see the judges saying: “We prefer realistic fiction,” or “We prefer tomes.” So I stopped trying to guess. This year there’s a few satirical, magical books. I’m looking forward to meeting [the judges] and sucking up to them and saying nice things about their great taste.
Have you read any of your rivals on the Booker shortlist?
Rivals! Fellow lottery winners. I ordered the books on the longlist, but they’re not delivering books to Sri Lanka because it’s not an essential thing. I’ve got this shipment waiting out there. So I’ll be buying a lot of books when I hit the UK, for sure.
It’s 11 years since Chinaman. Were you writing Seven Moons all that time?
Well, life happened. I got married, had kids, two toddlers running around. That slows things down. I didn’t want to write about the present situation – by that, I mean just after the [Sri Lankan civil] war had ended, 2010, 2011. I always had this conceit of letting the victims of the atrocities speak for themselves, because everyone’s arguing over whose fault it was. And it took a while to realise that 1989 was the period I wanted to write about. It went through various false starts, and the only thing that survived was this character, Maali Almeida, who was a minor ghost in one of the earlier incarnations. And that’s when the book took some shape.
Was it important for you that such a violent story should also be funny?
I don’t know if that was intentional. There’s a Sri Lankan gallows humour, because we’ve been through a hell of a lot of catastrophes. The place isn’t as volatile as it was even a month or two ago; there’s still uncertainty, but there’s a lot of people cracking jokes. I think I could never write a straight-out-horror ghost story, maybe it’s just my sensibility. Even in the 1989 situation, there was a lot of farce and it was quite ridiculous.
The style of your novel is very freewheeling and vibrant. Are you following a tradition?
We’ve had a lot of Sri Lankan writing in English since the 90s: Michael Ondaatje, Romesh Gunesekera. But for me the guru was a gentleman called Carl Muller. He wrote The Jam Fruit Tree in 1993, and he was one of the first who used the way Sri Lankans speak. And I borrowed a lot from that for Chinaman, the idea of a drunk uncle telling a tall tale. So that’s where this irreverent brand of Sri Lankan writing stems from.
Your love of British pop culture shines through in the book. Does that come from when you lived here?
No! It was 80s Sri Lanka. We had two channels, and they would play old British comedies like Fawlty Towers – and Top of the Pops, of course, but two years old, so you’d be watching Frankie Goes to Hollywood in 1988. And we had VHS, too. We were the first generation who grew up watching TV.
Tell us about your time as a musician.
Not much to tell! I had a couple of grunge bands in the 90s and will probably start a midlife crisis band soon. Over the past couple of years, I’ve played piano, bass and guitar. I’m even thinking of getting a drum kit, much to my wife’s horror. I don’t think there’s going to be an album. The Dark Side of the Seven Moons…
What did you learn as a novelist from the process of writing Seven Moons?
I know the process more now. Before, you kind of get discouraged; writing a 200-page crappy draft takes a lot out of you. Whereas now I’m writing the third one, I’m expecting the first draft to be absolute crap. All you know is: it can be done. It’s not going to be easy, it’ll probably be harder, but it can be done.
In the acknowledgments, you name Douglas Adams, George Saunders and Kurt Vonnegut. Are they influences?
Certainly. Those are the big three. With Vonnegut, they’re all pretty dark stories, but they’re a riot. They’re all hilarious. I kept [Saunders’s] Tenth of December, the Hitchhiker’s five-part trilogy, and a couple of Vonnegut novels to hand, then when you’re stuck, you just dip in and out.
And Cormac McCarthy too. Not many laughs there.
No, but I was writing gruesome scenes of body disposal, so I would [read Blood Meridian] about Native Americans being scalped. There’s a lot of raw power. I’m not sure it even has a moral code to it. It’s just: men are brutes and apes and I’m going to use biblical language to describe it for 400 pages.
What was the last really great book you read?
It’s a grammar geek book. The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth. The past year, I’ve been obsessed by that book. It’s all about these little linguistic tricks through pop culture and the English language.
Did you read a lot as a child?
My mum gave me books but I don’t think I was reading more than anyone else. It did escalate as a teenager, when I went to boarding school in New Zealand. So I read as a kid, but those VHS tapes and Top of the Pops were more what I did.
How and where do you write?
This place here [gestures around office]. But, crucially, the time is 4am. Because I also do copywriting [during the day]. So I write until the kids wake up, about 7ish. And in between [working] I waste time playing with the lights, or doing playlists. But I don’t step out of this room. I don’t know if there’s sunshine outside. It was tougher when the kids kept banging on the door. Now I’ve trained them not to.
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka is published by Sort Of (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
