… Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka for his 2nd novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida*. Set in 1989 during Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war, the supernatural satire is about a man who wakes up dead and has a week – or 7 moons – to lead his loved ones to a hidden collection of photos that will expose the war’s atrocities. The 5-person panel of notable bookish types praised the novel for the “ambition of its scope and the hilarious audacity of its narrative techniques”. The prestigious £50,000 prize was initially only awarded to Commonwealth, Irish or South African authors before being expanded in 2014 to include authors of any English-language novel published in the UK or Ireland. But this year marked the 6th in a row that no Aussies were nominated. Why? Politics, according to some – isn’t everything…