Only a couple of bowlers are said to have mastered this style, which is turned on the cricket pitch bouncing in unpredictable angles. Karunasena) dying of liver disease and who until his death is trying to uncover the whereabouts of a mystery cricketer whose claim to fame is a style of spin-bowling known as Chinaman capable of deceiving any batsman. The punchy, arrogant tale of an alcoholic journalist (W.A. The award is an annual literary prize for the best work of literary writing in English founded in 1992 by Ondaatje with the money he received as a joint-winner of the Booker Prize for The English Patient. In 2010 Karunatilaka’s Chinaman emerged as the best Sri Lankan English fiction and won the Gratian Award. The novel, with a refreshing theme and written bordering on several literary genres, won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the Commonwealth Prize. Karunatilaka must have missed the target by a whisker, but I am sure we will hear more of him in the future. I am talking about Canadian superstar Michael Ondaatje whose The English Patient won a booker in 1992 and Romesh Gunasekera whose Reef was shortlisted in the prestigious award in 1994.

No Sri Lankan writer has so far achieved that feat except for two writers who were born on the island but became international stars on foreign soil. Shehan Karunatilaka’s Chinaman The Legend of Pradeep Mathew is so far the best work of fiction to come out of Sri Lanka, and I wonder why it failed to get into even the long list of the Booker Prize. The author and the book cover of the 10th anniversary editionĬhinaman The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, published by Penguins in 2010, price Indian Rupees 450 Sri Lankan Rupees 1350

Chinaman the legend of