First published 2012
W.G. Karunasena knows his liver is failing. The aging sportswriter has spent too many years drowning his sorrows in alcohol, and now time is running out. Before he dies, he becomes obsessed with solving one last mystery: finding Pradeep Mathew, a legendary cricket bowler who vanished without explanation. Karunasena teams up with his friend Ari for this final quest across Sri Lanka. Their search leads them to a coach with six fingers, encounters with a Tamil Tiger warlord, and discoveries that shake everything they believed about cricket and their war-torn homeland. As Karunasena's health deteriorates, the hunt for Mathew becomes more than just sports journalism. It transforms into a reckoning with Sri Lanka's violent recent past and the stories people tell themselves to survive.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, mystery, sports
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: mystery, quest, reckoning
Setting: Sri Lanka
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
416 pages · Paperback · Graywolf Press
Content warnings: violence, war