The seven moons of Maali Almeida

Malinda was a war photographer in the 80's who reports on the civil war in his country of Sri Lanka. He was a promiscous gay, a gambler and embedded in all sorts of political intrigues due to his selling of pictures to different actors. At the beginning of the book, he dies and goes to the in-between. He has 7 days to get into the Light or he'll become a ghost but he decides to spend those 7 days trying to figure out who killed him as well as to get some terrible war crime pictures that he took to be published. Througout the book we discover a somehow idealistic yet cynical narrator, who is disheartened and world-weary because of the horrors and disappointments he has experienced, but who has a good heart. The story is told chronologically in the after life, but non-chronologically in his biography, as he remembers things along the way. Most interestingly, the story is told in the second person. I think that the reason for that is that Malinda spends most of the book trying to whisper into the ears of the living and the second person narrator somehow reflects the whispering into the reader's ear. Or maybe it was something else, but I liked it anyhow. The style is peculiar, both difficult to read and easy to follow, which I guess reflects well the complex mindset of a spirit at the intersection between life, the after-life and memories of his life. I liked more the style than the actual story, though. The cultural and historial aspects of the civil war in Sri Lanka are hinted, but there is no supplementary insight into it, as everything is covered in a layer of cynicism that doesn't allow any motives. I honestly hoped to learn more about Sri Lankan recent past but I didn't. Also, personally, I think that the fact that the main character was gay kept me reading to see how the subject would be dealt with, even though, in the end, it's not that relevant to the story. In summary, it was interesting. Certainly not my favorite book ever, but interesting.