Sri Lanka's Shehan Karunatilaka wins Booker Prize

Writer Shehan Karunatilaka won the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction for "The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida," a satirical "afterlife noir" set during Sri Lanka's brutal civil war.

Karunatilaka, one of Sri Lanka's leading authors, won the 50,000 pound (USD 57,000) award on Monday for his second novel. The 47-year-old, who has also written journalism, children's books, screenplays and rock songs, is the second Sri Lanka-born Booker Prize winner, after Michael Ondaatje, who took the trophy in 1992 for "The English Patient." Karunatilaka received the award from Camilla, Britain's queen consort, during a ceremony at London's Roundhouse concert hall.

The judges' unanimous choice, "The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida" is the darkly humorous story about a murdered war photographer investigating his death and trying to ensure his life's legacy.

Karunatilaka said Sri Lankans "specialise in gallows humour and make jokes in the face of crises".

"It's our coping mechanism," he said, and expressed hope that his novel about war and ethnic division would one day be "in the fantasy section of the bookshop."

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