Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew

Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew is a 2010 novel by Shehan Karunatilaka. The book uses cricket as a device to write about Sri Lankan society. It tells the story of an alcoholic journalist's quest to track down a missing cricketer of the 1980s. The book was critically hailed, winning many awards. On 21 May 2012, Chinaman was announced as the regional winner for Asia of the Commonwealth Book Prize[2] and went on to win the overall Commonwealth Book Prize announced on 8 June.[3] It also won the 2012 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and the 2008 Gratiaen Prize.[4] Published to great acclaim in India and the UK, the book was one of the Waterstones 11 selected by British bookseller Waterstones as one of the top debuts of 2011 and was also shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt First Novel Prize.

Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew
2015 Sinhala translation cover
AuthorShehan Karunatilaka
IllustratorLalith Karunathilake[1]
Cover artistEranga Tennekoon[1]
CountrySri Lanka
LanguageEnglish
Set inSri Lanka
PublisherSelf-published
Publication date
2010
Media typePrint
Pages499
Awards2008 Gratiaen Prize
2012 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature
ISBN9789555236003 (first edition)
LC ClassMLCS 2010/01106 (P) PR9440.9.K378

Plot

The novel documents, in first person narrative, the attempts of its alcoholic writer to reclaim the legacy of one bowler, Pradeep Mathew: never mind that this same narrator might be attempting to recover his own lost greatness by discovering another's. What he finds is a world of thugs, booze, gambling, questionable honor, national interests which might be opposed to the truth, and a web of lies, half-truths, observed falsehoods, cheating and gamesmanship. In the end, our narrator cannot finish his book, because he cannot stay away from drinking, or his own failures. The task falls to others to finish this attempt to find the greatest bowler ever, and the man who might have made the greatness of Sri Lanka's cricket championships.

Publication

After the novel won the 2008 Gratiaen Prize, Shehan Karunatilaka contacted local and international publishers to assist him in editing the novel but was unable to find anyone to perform the large structural edit he felt the book needed. He chose to publish the book himself instead. Karunatilaka's wife, Eranga Tennekoon, created the book's cover while his brother, Lalith Karunathilake, created the illustrations. Karunatilaka's friend Deshan Tennekoon completed the typesetting and font design while screenwriter Ruwanthie de Chickera completed the structural edit for Chinaman. Michael Meyler completed line edits and Adam Smyth proofed the novel. The book was self-published in 2010, printed by Silverline Graphics and distributed through Perera Hussein Publishing House.[1]

In 2011, Chiki Sarkar of Random House India bought Chinaman and helped Karunatilaka edit it, removing nearly 100 pages. The cover art and font and were redone and it was published by Random House India and published internationally by Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Random House, in 2011.[1][5]

In 2015, a Sinhala language translation by Dileepa Abeysekera was published by Diogenes with the title Chinaman: Pradeep Mathewge Cricket Pravadaya.[6]

Reception

Writing for The Guardian, Nicholas Lezard praised the novel, writing, "This long, languorous and winding novel has registers of tragedy, farce, laugh-out-loud humour and great grace."[7]

Salil Tripathi of The Independent considered the book to be a contender for the "Great Sri Lankan Novel".[8]

Ludovic Hunter-Tilney of the Financial Times gave the novel a mixed review, writing, "The chronological structure darts around confusingly and there's an awkwardly tacked-on subplot about an English expat friend accused of pederasty," but concluded that the novel's "free-wheeling, zany tempo is part of its charm too."[9]

Awards and honours
gollark: But ask for anything remotely rare - or *have* something rareish - and boom, unrelated offers.
gollark: Well, that's not that bad, and probably occurs because nebulae are pretty common.
gollark: I suspect its users are mostly illiterate.
gollark: I just... why, trade hub, why? They do know it's not actually anywhere near the new release, right? Clearly no.
gollark: > explicitly asks for CB silver, no "offers"> gets an offer of two mimic pygmy eggs

References
  1. Kodagoda, Anuradha (29 September 2019). "Self-publishing". Sunday Observer. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  2. Commonwealth Book Prize & Commonwealth Short Story Prize Regional Winners 2012. Archived 2012-05-25 at the Wayback Machine
  3. Alison Flood (8 June 2012). "Shehan Karunatilaka wins 2012 Commonwealth book prize". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 June 2012.
  4. The Sunday Times, "Shehan’s winning googly", accessed 12 February 2011.
  5. Alex Tickell (30 April 2016). South-Asian Fiction in English: Contemporary Transformations. Palgrave Macmillan UK. p. 80. ISBN 978-1-137-40354-4.
  6. "Chinaman – Media kit, Shehan Karunatilaka, Dileepa Abeysekara". Diogenes. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  7. Lezard, Nicholas (17 April 2012). "Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  8. Tripathi, Salil (29 April 2011). "Chinaman, By Shehan Karunatilaka". The Independent. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  9. Hunter-Tilney, Ludovic (29 April 2011). "Chinaman". Financial Times. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
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