But by the end of the 1990s, most of the antagonists were dead, so I felt safer writing about these ghosts, rather than those closer to the present. It was a time of assassinations, disappearances, bombs and corpses. ‘1989 was the darkest year in my memory, where there was an ethnic war, a Marxist uprising, a foreign military presence and state counter-terror squads. A ghost story where the dead could offer their perspective seemed a bizarre enough idea to pursue, but I wasn’t brave enough to write about the present, so I went back 20 years, to the dark days of 1989.

‘I began thinking about it in 2009, after the end of our civil war, when there was a raging debate over how many civilians died and whose fault it was. This is also a deeply humane novel about how to live in intolerable circumstances, about whether change is possible, and how to set about coping if it’s not.’ It’s not just that Sri Lanka’s present is almost as complex – if thankfully not as violent – as its past. ‘There’s relevance in every one of Seven Moons’ many layers. ‘Maali himself is the heart and (literally) soul of the book, and he’s wonderful company, cheerfully unapologetic about what others might see as his failings, and uncowed – even by his own sudden death – in his commitment to his violently chaotic country and to Jaki and DD, the loves of his complicated life. ‘You have one response for those who believe Colombo to be overcrowded: wait till you see it with ghosts.’ This is Sri Lankan history as whodunnit, thriller, and existential fable teeming with the bolshiest of spirits.

‘The exhilarating energy with which we’re plunged into a rich and darkly comic world. ‘The voice of the novel – a first-person narrative rendered, with an astonishingly light touch, in the second person – is unforgettable: beguiling, unsentimental, by turns tender and angry and always unsparingly droll.

The seven moons of maali almeida signed