The shortlist of the Booker Prize generally has a very high literary standard. If this year’s six novels confirm once more the strong quality of the jury’s selection – all six books deserve to be read, even though not all are equally good or relevant –, „The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida“ definitely stands out – because of its ambition, its vision, its scope, its combination of the eerily surreal and the brutally realistic, its stylistic concision and its brilliant you-narration that allows Karunatilaka to combine one-liners that’ll stay with you with an almost cinematographic sense of describing places and characters.