(19 Oct 2022)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
London - 18 October 2022
1. SOUNDBITE (English) Shehan Karunatilaka, Booker Prize winner:
"I didn't prepare myself for winning. Yeah, you don't. How could you? You come there to enjoy the shortlist. And also it was a particularly strong shortlist. So there were a number of contenders, a number of great books there. So yeah, I mean, I had a little speech in my pocket, but yeah. So now after a couple of hours sleep and numerous interviews. Yeah, it hasn't really sunk in."
++BLACK FRAMES++
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Shehan Karunatilaka, Booker Prize winner:
"Well, I guess I started. I wanted to write a ghost story because I had written a cricket story, and I was getting invited to many sport panels, and I wanted to write something completely different. And so the idea of a ghost story was with me, but also around that time was the end of the Sri Lankan war. And there was a lot of debate over how many civilians had been killed and whose fault it was. And the debate got us nowhere. I didn't feel there was enough truth or reconciliation. It was just one side blaming the other side and trying to just apportion whose fault it was rather than addressing the causes. And so I did think, what if we could allow these silenced voices to speak? What if we could have a ghost story where the dead were allowed to speak? But I wasn't comfortable writing about that period just because it was too close. And also it might have been unsafe, it might have ruffled the wrong feathers. And so I thought, let me try and transport this idea to another period in our history, and there's plenty of periods to choose from. And I chose 1989 because I had memory of it as a teenager, second, third hand accounts. I wasn't that politically aware, but I remember it being a very unique position where there were wars on three different fronts."
++BLACK FRAMES++
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Shehan Karunatilaka, Booker Prize winner:
"So we had an abundance of corpses, abundance of unsolved killings in that time. And I thought, okay, I can maybe revisit this period that that I didn't know too much about at the time. And also I felt a bit safer because it's been well documented and it was 30 years in the past. And also the key actors in this drama, the antagonists were no longer with us. Most of them had been assassinated themselves. So it allowed me the freedom to write about it, which I perhaps wouldn't have enjoyed if I was writing contemporary hot takes on what's happening now."
++BLACK FRAMES++
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Shehan Karunatilaka, Booker Prize winner:
"When you laugh at something, it has less power. And I think we were unable to laugh at the government maybe a decade ago, but something changed in the second term that -- maybe it was the pandemic, maybe it was the fact that the interim government restored the freedom of the press. But people seemed quite bold enough to make jokes about those in power and ultimately were emboldened enough to take to the streets and get rid of them. So I think humor as a weapon is an underrated tool that we can use. And so I, I think certainly my sensibility, a certain part of the Sri Lankan character, perhaps it is universal, but it was it was a useful way for telling the story."  
  
STORYLINE:
NOVEL BY SRI LANKA'S SHEHAN KARUNATILAKA WINS BOOKER PRIZE
In an interview with Associated Press Tuesday, writer Shehan Karunatilaka explained that his Booker Prize-winning ghost story "allowed these silenced voices to speak" in order to understand the causes of war.
He credited humor as a useful tool in telling the story.
  
  
  

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