Spectral interlocutions and the politics of unfinished: Buddhism, haunting, and memory in Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how a Sri Lankan novel uses haunting as a metaphor for truth-telling and reconciliation after civil war.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framework combining hauntology, Buddhist cosmology, and sociology to interpret literary representations of post-war justice.

Findings

Haunting in the novel functions as a sociological process for truth-telling and recognition.

The ghostly presence of Maali Almeida challenges political amnesia and promotes ethical accountability.

The paper argues for reconciliation through memory and truth rather than retribution or denial.

Abstract

Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (2022) offers a reimagined depiction of the Sri Lankan civil war aftermath in the context of restorative justice. It offers a discussion of how haunting serves as a sociological process for truth-telling, recognition, and reconciliation within post-war Sri Lanka. Using a theoretical approach rooted in Derrida’s hauntology, Avery Gordon’s notion of haunting, and Buddhist cosmology in the sociology of literature framework, this research examines how the novel reworks the afterlife as a site of moral and collective accountability. The war photographer, Maali Almeida, who died during the civil war, is a witness. Through his ghostly presence, he forces the living to reveal hidden atrocities and acknowledges collective damage. His haunting challenges political amnesia. And it represents how memory, justice, and healing are indistinguishably related in a violence-plagued society. Finally, by imagining haunting as a metaphor and a means of restorative justice, the paper argues that Karunatilaka’s novel does not imagine reconciliation through retribution or denial, but in terms of truth-telling, memory, and ethical liberation.