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The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises: From the Winner of the Booker Prize 2022

Shehan Karunatilaka

'It's a simple car bomb, and it's rigged to a busload of schoolgirls. No one knows it is there except for me.'

Unpleasant truths await a Sri Lankan president in the back of a London cab. An advertising agency has to come to terms with a blown-up collection of pictures of its employees' penises. A man presumed missing, quietly journals by the sea. A being dispassionately recalls the numerous births it had taken and absurd fates it had to endure. An Englishman, a Dutchman and a Portuguese man walk into a Ceylon bar with grand narcotic designs.

A masterful blend of dry wit, morbid charm and earnest observations, Booker-winning author Shehan Karunatilaka's The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises is a collection of fantastic short stories that serves up fantasies for both doomsday and everyday, marking the return of one of South Asia's most compelling storytellers.

  • Classification : General & Literary Fiction
  • Pub Date : SEP 29, 2022
  • Imprint : Hachette India
  • Page Extent : 272
  • Binding : HB
  • ISBN : 9789393701213
  • Price : INR 599
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Shehan Karunatilaka

Shehan Karunatilaka is a Sri Lankan writer whose first book, Chinaman, won the Commonwealth Book Prize, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the Gratiaen Prize, and was shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most original novels to come out of Sri Lanka. His second novel, Chats with the Dead, was published in the subcontinent in 2020 to great critical acclaim; and its UK version The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida won the Booker Prize 2022.

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