Shehan Karunatilaka author page

Shehan Karunatilaka biography

Shehan Karunatilaka is a Sri Lankan writer of fiction for adults and children. He studied at Massey University in New Zealand and has worked in advertising and as a creative director.

His debut novel, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, was first published in 2010. The book won the Gratiaen Prize and later received the Commonwealth Book Prize and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.

Karunatilaka’s children’s book Please Don’t Put That In Your Mouth was published in 2019.

An earlier version of his second novel appeared in the Indian subcontinent as Chats with the Dead (2020). The revised novel was published in the UK as The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Sort of Books on 4 August 2022 and won the Booker Prize on 17 October 2022.