Colombo, 1989. Maali Almeida, war photographer, gambler and closet queen, has woken up dead in an all too familiar bureaucratic after life. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira lake and he has no idea who killed him - in a country where scores are settled by death ...squads, suicide bombers and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long. Ghouls and ghosts with grudges abound but Maali has no time to chat with the dead. He needs to contact the living - namely, the man he loves and the woman who loves him - and lead them to his hidden cache of photos that will shake Sri Lanka. Ten years after his prizewinning novel Chinaman established him as one of Sri Lanka's foremost authors, Shehan Karunatilaka is back with a mordant, hauntingly funny satire. Chats with the Dead is a state-of-the-nation epic that proves yet again that the best fiction offers the ultimate truth.
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