The prestigious U.K. prize annually recognizes the best novel written in the English.
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, a supernatural satire set amid a murderous Sri Lankan civil war, has won the Booker Prize. The Sri Lankan writer's novel is about a photographer who wakes up dead, with a week to ask his friends to find his photos and expose the brutality of war.
Camilla, the Queen Consort, presented the prize, and the author said it had been "an honour and a privilege" to be on the shortlist.
Pop singer Dua Lipa was the star guest.
The prestigious £50,000 prize, for a single work of fiction published in the U.K. in English, also gives the other five writers on the shortlist £2,500 each.
The writer said he decided in 2009 to write "a ghost story where the dead could offer their perspective" after the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, "when there was a raging debate over how many civilians died and whose fault it was".
It was the English language literary award’s first in-person ceremony since 2019.
The other five books on the shortlist this year are – Glory by Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawayo, The Trees by American author Percival Everett, Treacle Walker by English novelist Alan Garner, Small Things Like These by Irish author Claire Keegan and Oh William! by American novelist and author Elizabeth Strout.
