Comic, macabre, angry and thumpingly alive... [Maali's voice] has bite, brilliance, and sparkle... Still, the furious comedy in Mr. Karunatilaka's novel never courts despair.-- "Economist"

A mix of mischievous magic realism and absurdist humour... [A] wild, uncategorisable [novel].--Claire Allfree "Telegraph"

The obvious literary comparisons are with the magical realism of Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez. But the novel also recalls the mordant wit and surrealism of Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls or Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita... Karunatilaka has done artistic justice to a terrible period in his country's history.--Tomiwa Owolade "Guardian"

This book is difficult to categorise. With ghosts and spirits in the afterlife, it is part supernatural. But it also gives you a thorough grounding in Sri Lankan politics. And as the narrative gathers pace it becomes a whodunnit. The result is a thrilling read.--Rebecca Jones "BBC"

The most significant work of Sri Lankan fiction in a decade... Amid the dryness, satire and weary lamentations on the state of Sri Lanka there is genuine heart to this novel.--Charlie Connelly "New European Review"

Karunatilaka's novel breaks with conventional modes of storytelling to reveal humanness in a strange, sprawling, tragic situation... Like Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Grass's Tin Drum and Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, Karunatilaka's book is supremely confident in its literary heterodoxy, and likewise in offering idiosyncratic particularities of ordinary Sri Lankan life well beyond the serious matters of politics, history, religion and mythology... Readers everywhere will find in such demanding specificity what we all seek from great books: the exciting if overwhelming fullness of an otherwise unknown world told on its own terms, and that frisson of unexpected identification and understanding that comes from working to stay in it.--Randy Boyagoda "New York Times Book Review"

There can't be many novels that simultaneously bring to mind Agatha Christie, Salman Rushdie, Raymond Chandler, John le Carré and Stranger Things--but this one does... Karunatilaka respects the conventions of all the genres that he piles up so extravagantly...The result is an unexpectedly exhilarating read.--James Walton "Times [UK]"

A staggering achievement.--Anjum Hasan "New York Review of Books"

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Pub date: 2022-11-01

Length: 400 pages