Chinaman
From author of Booker Prize 2022 winner The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Published:5th Apr '12
Should be back in stock very soon

One of the most acclaimed debuts of the year - a rumbustuous, brilliant novel about Sri Lanka, cricket and the search for a legendary sportsman
On his quest he will also uncover a coach with six fingers, a secret bunker below a famous stadium, a Tamil Tiger warlord, and startling truths about Sri Lanka, cricket and himself.
Winner of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.
Discover the blazing debut novel from the Booker Prize winning author.
'A crazy ambidextrous delight' Michael Ondaatje
Where is Pradeep S. Mathew - spin bowler extraordinaire and 'the greatest cricketer to walk the earth'?
Retired sportswriter W. G. Karunasena is dying, and he wants to know.
W.G. will spend his final months drinking arrack, making his wife unhappy, ignoring his son and tracking down the mysterious Pradeep. On his quest he will also uncover a coach with six fingers, a secret bunker below a famous stadium, a Tamil Tiger warlord, and startling truths about Sri Lanka, cricket and himself.
'Bristling with energy and confidence' Sunday Times
Winner of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature
The strength of the book lies in its energy, its mixture of humour and heartwrenching emotion, its twisting narrative, its playful use of cricketing facts and characters, and its occasional blazing anger about what Sri Lanka has done to itself... * Guardian *
Carries real weight...a mixture of, say, CLR James, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Fernando Pessoa and Sri Lankan arrack...essential to anyone with a taste for maverick genius * The Times *
Karunatilaka has a real lightness of touch. He mixes humour and violence with the same deftness with which his protagonist mixes drinks * Observer *
Chinaman is a debut bristling with energy and confidence, a quixotic novel that is both an elegy to lost ambitions and a paean to madcap dreams * Sunday Times *
Chinaman's free-wheeling, zany tempo is part of its charm too. Its picaresque action, mainly based in Colombo and narrated in short bite-sized chunks, gives a vibrant comic pulse to Sri Lankan life, even though Karunatilaka's portrait of the country is scathing...it confirms that cricket, a game that is largely played in the head and inhabits a bizarrely detailed parallel world to our own, is ideally suited to the purposes of fiction * Financial Times *
A Great Cricket Novel. For a game without much great fiction, that's a reason to applaud with drums - and forget the rules the marshals impose at Lord's * Independent *
It's funny and original, extremely revealing about Sri Lanka, and as for the cricket, in the author's own words: "If you can't understand why anyone would watch, let alone obsess over this dull game, then this is the book for you." Brilliant * The Times *
At an early stage, I will confess that I was very close to typing 'Pradeep Mathew Cricinfo' into Google just to check whether there was indeed a Sri Lankan cricketer of that name ... that may be a recommendation of the book; it may be a condemnation. But I have always had a soft spot for Sri Lankan cricket * Daily Telegraph *
A hugely entertaining read * South Wales Echo *
Confident and poignant debut * Sunday Times *
- Winner of Commonwealth Book Prize 2012
- Winner of Commonwealth Book Prize - Asia 2012
ISBN: 9780099555681
Dimensions: 197mm x 128mm x 24mm
Weight: 285g
416 pages