Singapore Writers Festival 2024: Writing ‘like a drunk uncle’ won Shehan Karunatilaka acclaim
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Sri Lankan Booker Prize-winning novelist Shehan Karunatilaka (left) with former Singapore Writers Festival director Pooja Nansi at Victoria Concert Hall.
ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
SINGAPORE – Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunatilaka knew he could not emulate the highly edited styles of his literary idols Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, so he did the exact opposite. “I can definitely write like a drunk uncle telling a story.”
He was speaking at the quarter-filled 673-seater Victoria Concert Hall for the Singapore Writers Festival (SWF), which runs till Nov 17.
In an entertaining conversation with former SWF director Pooja Nansi on Nov 10, the festival headliner talked about having 30 pages slashed by his editor into two sentences and the rambling art of cricket commentary.
“I’ve read all my one-starred reviews who couldn’t get past the first 30 pages,” said the Sri Lankan writer with a chuckle. He is best known for The Seven Moons Of Maali Almeida (2022) – a ghost story of a whodunnit which snagged the Booker Prize in 2022 – and cricket novel Chinaman: The Legend Of Pradeep Mathew (2010).
But stick with the South Asian uncle through his seemingly digressive narrative, and you will reach a moment when everything suddenly makes sense, Karunatilaka said.
He had to rewrite Chats With The Dead, first published in the Indian subcontinent in 2020 as The Seven Moons Of Maali Almeida for the Western market. But the advertising veteran thinks rewriting copy is just a fact of life. “I don’t see it as a sell-out. But I’m in advertising – I don’t mind selling out.”
The writer is no stranger to Singapore, as he had worked here at various advertising agencies between 2010 and 2014. He previously told The Straits Times that Haw Par Villa shaped the texture of his afterlife whodunnit, and now told the audience that, in Singapore, he had formed a band called Friday Night Divorce.
The talk at SWF would be, he said, his last talk in at least two years, as Booker Prize fame has taken him away from his writing. “I’m going to start writing tomorrow, as soon as I sit down.”
The novelist, who is superstitiously tight-lipped about his next book, would only say: “This might give away what I’m researching at the moment, but I’m watching a lot of workplace comedies (and American screenwriter) Aaron Sorkin’s stuff.”
Fans queueing to get their autographs signed by Sri Lankan Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunatilaka at the Singapore Writers Festival outside Victoria Concert Hall on Nov 10.
ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
In the afternoon, at the panel titled Maximum Headroom: Exploring The Psyches Of Tortured Poets, poets from Singapore – Max Pasakorn and Ally Chua – and Australia – Rob Waters and Luoyang Chen – discussed whether poetry is necessarily born of suffering and pain.
Waters, who is from the Gomeroi tribe and the current Australian Poetry Slam Champion, talked about how indigenous voices in Australia needed more “truth-listening”, instead of what is often called “truth-telling”. “I’m not here to make people comfortable. I’m not here to disregard my rage.”
Fujian-born Chen, who is often seen as a second-language speaker of English, said of his relationship to the language: “With English, I want to do something different. I want to manipulate the words, I want to rearrange the syntax. I want to create something beautiful out of this shame or embarrassment. I want to show Australian people that I’m more Australian than you.”
The panel, packed with a younger crowd of aspiring writers and poets, ended with eager questions about the craft of poetry.
