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Chinaman
- Author
- Shehan Karunatilaka
- Narrator
- Shivantha Wijesinha
- Publisher
- Random House
- Publish Date
- 1 June 2023
- Run Time
- 17 hours 15 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
Discover the blazing debut novel from the Booker Prize winning author.
'A crazy ambidextrous delight' Michael Ondaatje
Where is Pradeep S. Mathew - spin bowler extraordinaire and 'the greatest cricketer to walk the earth'?
Retired sportswriter W. G. Karunasena is dying, and he wants to know.
W.G. will spend his final months drinking arrack, making his wife unhappy, ignoring his son and tracking down the mysterious Pradeep. On his quest he will also uncover a coach with six fingers, a secret bunker below a famous stadium, a Tamil Tiger warlord, and startling truths about Sri Lanka, cricket and himself.
'Bristling with energy and confidence' Sunday Times
Winner of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature
©2011 Shehan Karunatilaka (P)2023 Penguin Audio
Critics Review
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The strength of the book lies in its energy, its mixture of humour and heartwrenching emotion, its twisting narrative, its playful use of cricketing facts and characters, and its occasional blazing anger about what Sri Lanka has done to itself...
Guardian
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Carries real weight...a mixture of, say, CLR James, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Fernando Pessoa and Sri Lankan arrack...essential to anyone with a taste for maverick genius
The Times
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Karunatilaka has a real lightness of touch. He mixes humour and violence with the same deftness with which his protagonist mixes drinks
Observer
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Chinaman is a debut bristling with energy and confidence, a quixotic novel that is both an elegy to lost ambitions and a paean to madcap dreams
Sunday Times
See more reviews See fewer reviews
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Chinaman's free-wheeling, zany tempo is part of its charm too. Its picaresque action, mainly based in Colombo and narrated in short bite-sized chunks, gives a vibrant comic pulse to Sri Lankan life, even though Karunatilaka's portrait of the country is scathing...it confirms that cricket, a game that is largely played in the head and inhabits a bizarrely detailed parallel world to our own, is ideally suited to the purposes of fiction
Financial Times
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A Great Cricket Novel. For a game without much great fiction, that's a reason to applaud with drums - and forget the rules the marshals impose at Lord's
Independent
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It's funny and original, extremely revealing about Sri Lanka, and as for the cricket, in the author's own words: "If you can't understand why anyone would watch, let alone obsess over this dull game, then this is the book for you." Brilliant
The Times
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At an early stage, I will confess that I was very close to typing 'Pradeep Mathew Cricinfo' into Google just to check whether there was indeed a Sri Lankan cricketer of that name ... that may be a recommendation of the book; it may be a condemnation. But I have always had a soft spot for Sri Lankan cricket
Daily Telegraph
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A hugely entertaining read
South Wales Echo
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Confident and poignant debut
Sunday Times
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Shehan Karunatilaka
- Narrator
- Shivantha Wijesinha
- Duration
- 17 hours 15 minutes
- Release Date
- 1 June 2023
- ISBN
- 9781529910759
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Random House
- Genre
- Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Family life fiction / Stories about family, Narrative theme: sense of place, Sports fiction
Synopsis
Brought to you by Penguin.Discover the blazing debut novel from the Booker Prize winning author.'A crazy ambidextrous delight' Michael OndaatjeWhere is Pradeep S. Mathew - spin bowler extraordinaire and 'the greatest cricketer to walk the earth'?Retired sportswriter W. G. Karunasena is dying, and he wants to know.W.G. will spend his final months drinking arrack, making his wife unhappy, ignoring his son and tracking down the mysterious Pradeep. On his quest he will also uncover a coach with six fingers, a secret bunker below a famous stadium, a Tamil Tiger warlord, and startling truths about Sri Lanka, cricket and himself.'Bristling with energy and confidence' Sunday TimesWinner of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature©2011 Shehan Karunatilaka (P)2023 Penguin Audio
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