Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew

By Shehan Karunatilaka

Retired sportswriter W.G. Karunasena is dying. He will spend his final months drinking arrack, upsetting his wife, ignoring his son, and tracking down Pradeep S. Mathew, an elusive spin bowler he considers ‘the greatest cricketer to walk the earth’.On his quest to find this unsung genius, W.G. uncovers a coach with six fingers, a secret bunker below a famous stadium, an LTTE warlord, and startling truths about Sri Lanka, cricket and himself.Ambitious, playful and strikingly original, Chinaman is a novel about cricket and Sri Lanka and of Sri Lanka through its cricket. Hailed by the Gratiaen Prize judges as ‘one of the most imaginative works of contemporary Sri Lankan fiction’, it is an astounding book.