Myth, Mystery, and Murder: Trauma and Resistance in The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Abstract

This paper attempts to read Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, which is set against the 1980s Sri Lankan Civil War, and focuses primarily on how the mythic and magic realist elements within the narrative offer different variations of the idea of a national imaginary and delineate the intersectional traumatic experiences of the central character, Maali Almeida. Bronisław Malinowski, in his Myth in Primitive Psychology, stated that people in pain often turn to myths, legends, and folktales to seek a form of psychological escape from the repressions imposed by society. The novel, however, uses fantasy not as a form of psychological escape, but as a form of resistance against the chaos and injustice which the Civil War ensued. Designed partly as a whodunit, with the ghost of a dead gay atheist photojournalist searching for his killer, it provides certain avenues of exploration into trauma studies and also looks at how the central character rises above his own trauma by resorting to fantasy and magic realism. Moreover, by retaining the voice of the dead character, and also using a second person narrative style, it implicates the reader within the scheme of events and leaves open a possibility of overcoming trauma through a new understanding of the social and political institutions.