Retired sportswriter WG Karunasena is dying. He will spend his final months drinking arrack, making his wife unhappy, ignoring his son and tracking down Pradeep S. Mathew, a spin bowler who has mysteriously disappeared and who WG considers 'the greatest cricketer to walk the earth'. On his quest to find this unsung genius, WG uncovers 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. Ambitious, playful and strikingly original, "Chinaman" is a novel about cricket and Sri Lanka - and the story of modern day Sri Lanka through its most cherished sport. Hailed by the Gratiaen Prize judges as 'one of the most imaginative works of contemporary Sri Lankan fiction', it is an astounding book.

Prizes

Winner of Commonwealth Book Prize 2012 and Commonwealth Book Prize - Asia 2012.

A crazy ambidextrous delight. A drunk and totally unreliable narrator runs alongside the reader insisting him or her into the great fictional possibilities of cricket. -- Michael Ondaatje The best cricket novel I have ever read. Shehan's love for the game is matched by his flair for storytelling. As spell binding as an India-Pakistan one day match. I felt like shouting 'Howzat' on every other page. Ifyou love cricket read this, if you love novels read this and If you love both, you know this one is for you. -- Mohammed Hanif

Shehan Karunatilaka has written advertisements, rock songs, travel stories and basslines. Chinaman is his first novel.