Ghosts, Eco-Queer, Sri Lankan History: Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Abstract

This essay aims to comment on the consequences of the queering of historical vision in reference to the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict and, in a wider perspective, of the country’s origins in Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (2022). The tropicality of the writer’s outlook is analysed in terms of the shift from individualized focus on tragic events to an ecocentric vision of the unity of all beings. The novel, featuring a gay photographer, contains multiple references to the iconic photographic work of Nick Ut (“Napalm Girl”) and, crucially, Sri Lankan photographer Lionel Wendt. Inscribed in a reinvented Buddhist/Saivite worldview, the text blurs the painful perception of the recent past and presents the interethnic conflict as part of the general, ever-repeating mechanism of violence activated at the country’s beginnings by the legendary primordial queen Kuveni, as told in the Mahāvaṁsa. Due to the transhistorical aspect of violence under the auspices of Kuveni-Mahakali, the mission of the photographer, who tries to solve the political conundrum through artistic intervention, cannot be accomplished. Instead, the novel’s focus moves to an even broader, ecocentric vision that acquires a queer resonance. The range of queer relations expands beyond the intimate relations of the protagonist to become an intimate connection to all living beings. In parallel, the ‘decloseted’ historical vision shifts away from the recent genocide and broadens into a tropical eco-queer outlook encompassing human and non-human vitality.