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When my friend and A Case of Exploding Mangoes author Mohammed Hanif glowingly recommended this debut novel to me, he told me I would enjoy it because it revolves around cricket, a game I frequently obsess about, unlike him. As he admits himself, he doesn’t know the difference between a googly and a doosra. But, he added, it’s not really about cricket; cricket is merely the window-dressing for this “contender for the title of The Great Sri Lankan Novel”, as a Sunday Times reviewer dubbed it. Hanif was both right and wrong.
Shehan Karunatilaka’s novel, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew — which won the Michael Ondaatje-established and well-respected Gratiaen Prize (for English writing by a resident Sri Lankan) as far back as 2008 but was only published outside the island nation this year — is about far more than cricket. It is an oblique reflection on corrupt Sri Lankan politics, a dissection of its everyday culture, a caustic indictment of the racism its Tamil citizens face at the hands of the Sinhala majority, an insightful psychological study of one man’s headlong foray into self-destruction, a layered relationships drama, a detective thriller, as well as a hilarious collection of musings about any number of things that strike the author’s fancy, including the publishing world that ensures that only works that reaffirm the orientalist gaze — using evocative clichés such as ‘monsoon’ and ‘spice’ in their titles — make it into the market.
But at the same time, this remarkable book is very much about cricket as well. I cannot imagine how anyone with either no knowledge of or at least a passing passion for the sport would read this novel. They could, of course, but would lose out on at least half the sly references that make this book such an absolute delight.
The story’s narrator for the most part is W.G. Karunasena, a cynical, alcoholic sports journalist in his 60s who won the Lankan Sports Journalist of the Year award twice but whose volatile temperament has mostly put him on the wrong side of the media people who matter and who is slowly drinking himself to death. W.G., or Wije as he is known to his few remaining friends (he is well aware of the resonance of his initials with the legendary 19th century English cricketer), has a strained relationship with his wife and an almost non-existent one with his son because of his all-consuming passions of cricket and alcohol. He is also obsessed with a Tamil Sri Lankan cricketer called Pradeep Sivanathan Mathew, who most either do not remember or recall with derision, but who Wije considers the greatest cricketer in the history of the game. For him, Mathew, who played in only four Test matches in the 1980s and seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth in the 1990s, ranks as a spinner above Muttiah Muralitharan, or as he terms the latter, “the second greatest spin bowler Sri Lanka has produced.”
The novel is basically Karunasena’s journey to uncover details about Mathew’s mysterious life — even the cricketer’s records seem to have been expunged from the history books — for a book he is writing. He hopes his magnum opus will not only affirm the unheralded genius of the vanished sportsman but also be his own swan song. Accompanying him on the journey are his neighbour and fellow cricket fanatic Ari Byrd who does Bogart impersonations as well, a Newcastle Football supporting British consular officer with a dark personal secret, a paan-eating Muslim rickshaw driver and a long-suffering wife Sheila. Along the way he encounters six-fingered spinning coaches, diabolical midgets, Filipino bookies, logistics coordinators for the Tamil Tigers, jet-setting gora cricket commentators, sexy marketing executives-turned paramours, gypsy fortune-tellers and a host of current and former international cricketers.
Some of these cricketers are thinly disguised, such as the one referred in the book as the GLOB (Great Lankan Opening Batsman), or the Yorkshire batsman turned surly commentator. Others make outright appearances, such as Arjuna Ranatunge, Aravinda de Silva, Hashan Tillekaratne and Javed Miandad. Miandad, in fact, has one of the funniest stories involving Pradeep Mathew woven around him. In this blurring of fact and fiction, in fact, Chinaman is reminiscent of Hanif’s own debut novel, Exploding Mangoes, which takes the same liberties with Pakistan’s political and military figures and events from the 1980s.
The other novel whose echoes I felt strongly in Chinaman is one of my favourite reads over the last 10 years, American author Paul Auster’s The Book of Illusions. Illusions is also a story of a writer (also recovering from a bout of alcoholism) trying to trace the life of a forgotten rising star (in silent era Hollywood comedy) who mysteriously disappeared decades earlier after making only some half a dozen films. I have no idea if Shehan Karunatilaka has ever read that novel or is even aware of it. However, the similarity of the plot device is the only aspect linking the two novels.
At times Chinaman seems almost a series of anecdotes that jump back and forth in time and off-beat authorial musings. The strategy to put sub-headings in lieu of chapters did initially begin to get on my nerves, perhaps simply because one is not used to reading flow being constantly broken up, sometimes after only a short para. And I began to wonder if, more than a literary device to capture the writing style of W.G. Karunasena, these may not more accurately reflect Shehan Karunatilaka’s own style, a collection of random cue-card jottings as inspiration struck him. But one soon learns to ignore the breaks, and the intricacy of the tale being spun draws you in enough to forgive such minor irritations. Unlike most other novels, Chinaman is also peppered with diagrams about the technical aspects of cricket and various bowling grips, as well as some photographs purporting to show characters from the book but which are usually, tantalisingly, too under-exposed to reveal much.
The brilliance of Karunatilaka is in crafting a voice for his rambunctious, reflective, dying protagonist that is completely and entirely believable, not a small feat for a writer at least 20 years younger. Equally remarkable is the layered nuance he brings to W.G.’s human relationships, particularly that with his wife. It is a testy relationship but not without its moments of tenderness and regret. And in Pradeep Mathew, Karunatilaka has conjured up one of the most fascinating cricketers you never knew. Among the bizarre things W.G. discovers about Mathew are that contrary to popular perception of him as a left-arm leg-spinner, he could at times also be a right-arm off-spinner or even a pace bowler.
But Karunatilka’s other big achievement is in making contemporary Sri Lanka come alive, warts and all, even for readers who may never have been there. This is no romanticisation of Sri Lanka as an idyllic island nation of coconut trees and beaches; it addresses real problems of political violence, ethnic divisions and societal corruption but in such a manner that it never seems preachy or predictable. A sense of absurdist humour pervades the writing. In a passage mulling the unusually long names Sri Lanka is known for, he drops in a gentle reminder of the pervasive ethnic prejudice the Tamil minority must often contend with. “So why did a boy born Mathew Pradeepan Sivanathan decide to shed his surname when joining Sri Lankan cricket?” he questions. “I could be wrong, but I suspect it had little to do with length.”
In any case, any book whose characters play a game called “Seamless Paki” — a contest to see who can construct the longest sequence of overlapping Pakistani cricketers’ names, for example: “Saqlain Mushtaq Mohammad Wasim Akram Raza” — can’t but be enjoyed.
The reviewer is a cultural critic.
Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (NOVEL) By Shehan Karunatilaka Random House, India ISBN 9788184001525 395pp. Indian Rs499
