Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic Karunatilaka, S. 2012 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Winner of the Commonwealth Book Prize
* Winner of the $50,000 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature *
* A Publishers Weekly "First Fiction" Pick for Spring 2012 *
"A crazy ambidextrous delight. A drunk and totally unreliable narrator runs alongside the reader insisting him or her into the great fictional possibilities of cricket."--Michael Ondaatje
Aging sportswriter W.G. Karunasena's liver is shot. Years of drinking have seen to that. As his health fades, he embarks with his friend Ari on a madcap search for legendary cricket bowler Pradeep Mathew. En route they discover a mysterious six-fingered coach, a Tamil Tiger warlord, and startling truths about their beloved sport and country. A prizewinner in Sri Lanka, and a sensation in India and Britain, The Legend of Pradeep Mathew by Shehan Karunatilaka is a nimble and original debut that blends cricket and the history of modern Sri Lanka into a vivid and comedic swirl.
Author Notes
Shehan Karunatilaka lives and works in Singapore. He has written advertisements, rock songs, travel stories, and basslines. This is his first novel.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Karunatilaka's exciting debut novel places the search for a mythical cricket bowler against the backdrop of Sri Lankan politics and a transforming society. Through narrative cul-de-sacs and asides, the main story concerns W.G. Karunasena, an alcoholic sports writer who, with the help of friends, has been given the task of producing a television series about Sri Lanka's greatest cricketers. This gives him the long-dreamed-for chance to tell the nation about the disappeared Pradeep Mathew, a little known player but also perhaps the greatest in the nation's history. Along the way, Karunasena struggles to find a six-fingered bowling coach who may have vital information regarding the details of the vanished Mathew, faces a Tamil Tiger warlord, and addresses the legacy of colonialism that still haunts his country. "Ideally, we Sri Lankans should have retained our friendly, child-like nature and combined it with the inventiveness of our colonisers. Instead we inherit Portuguese lethargy, Dutch hedonism, and British snobbery." Karunatilaka comes from an advertising background, like Kurt Vonnegut, an author with whom he strikes a similar stylistic chord. They share a dry fatalistic sense of humor and punchy straightforward prose. For American readers, cricket is a maddeningly complex game; this novel does nothing to dispel confusion despite discussion on the flight and drift of the cricket ball and photographs and illustrations dealing with the mechanics of the game. Nevertheless, Karunatilaka is a dazzling and eloquent new literary voice. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
An investigation into the life and times of a mysterious Sri Lankan cricket player from the perspective of an obsessed fan. Though Sri Lankan himself, sportswriter Wijedasa Gamini Karunasena (Wije to his friends) fits in well with the American stereotype of the journalist as a cigarette-smoking boozer. He and his friends spend their time compiling and arguing about all-star cricket teams, in much the same way Americans would argue over the relative merits of DiMaggio, Williams and Mantle. After years of abusing his liver, and after the Cricket World Cup matches in 1996, he begins to track down the enigmatic Pradeep Mathew, a "spinner" and the best Sri Lankan cricketer ever. (One sign of Pradeep's omnipresence in the culture occurs when one of the journalist's friends refers to Montgomery Clift as "the Pradeep Mathew of the silver screen.") In a short period of time Pradeep made a splash and then disappeared, and his mystery involves being simultaneously forgotten and mythologized. Wije is determined to track down the cricketer's movements and ultimate destiny, so he puts ads in the paper, fishing for "anyone who knows anything about...," and he has limited success--a woman who claims to be his sister, a former girlfriend who has a handwritten poem from the athlete--but Pradeep and his legacy largely remain silent. Wije plays out his obsession with his friend Ari but against a family he's neglecting, and his problems with whisky eventually land him into a 12-step recovery program. The novel works on many levels--including the sociological and the mythic--and can serve as a primer both for adepts and for those who've never seen a cricket match.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* For American readers clueless about cricket and we are everywhere this first novel might be tough going, despite having won the 2008 Gratiaen Prize, a literary award established by novelist Michael Ondaatje for the best English-language writing by a resident Sri Lankan, and despite Karunatilaka's noble efforts to explain the game to the uninformed. Thankfully, we are guided through the novel by charming, aging, alcoholic sportswriter-bounder W. G. (Wije) Karunasena and his trusted friend Ari Byrd both equally passionate and opinionated about cricket as they seek out the elusive (and fictional) Tamil bowler Pradeep Mathew, whose patchy but brilliant career included Sri Lanka's inspired (and real-life) World Cup championship in 1996. Arguing and deconstructing cricket all the way, the pair leads us to, among other places, Colombo's living rooms, bars, casinos, and cricket pitches and their attendant characters all played out amid the island's heartrending, surreal, 26-year-long civil war. If Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost (2000) portrayed that war in darkly rendered overtones, Karunatilaka weaves it into the whole cloth of Colombo's comically absurd daily life. Yet droll as his observations might be ( They say ambulances in Sri Lanka barely make it to the funeral ), Wije is clear-eyed about his own and his country's failings and the terrors those failings have produced. More impressive, Wije, like many of his countrymen, carries a heroism he hardly knows he has.--Moores, Alan Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Ailing sportswriter W.G. Karunasena searches for legendary cricket bowler Pradeep Mathew. A DSC and Gratiaen prize winner; "brilliant" (The Times, UK). (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.