Chinaman

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Chinaman

By: Shehan Karunatilaka

Narrated by: Shivantha Wijesinha

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Discover the blazing debut novel from the Booker Prize winning author.

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.

Winner of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature

Family Life

Fiction

Genre Fiction

Literary Fiction

South Asian Creators

Sports

Listeners also enjoyed...

Critic reviews

"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..." (Kamila Shamsie)

"A crazy ambidextrous delight." (Michael Ondaatje)

"Bristling with energy and confidence." (Sunday Times)

Featured article: Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunatilaka on a rare Sri Lankan story that didn’t involve the civil war

We absolutely loved listening to Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, so when his debut novel Chinaman was released as an audiobook earlier this year, we couldn’t wait to ask him about it.

Most relevant

This is a book filled with conversations, contradictory stories, where the reader's perception of reality is constantly challenged by unreliable narrators. I enjoy being misled as such and listening to these stories and discovering every character.