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 and went on to win the overall Commonwealth Book Prize announced on 8 June. It also won the 2012 DSC Prize for South  Asian Literature, and the 2008 Gratiaen Prize. 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. 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. 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. In 2015, a Sinhala language translation by Dileepa Abeysekera was published by Diogenes with the title "Chinaman: Pradeep Mathewge Cricket Pravadaya". 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." Salil Tripathi of "The Independent" considered the book to be  a contender for the "Great Sri Lankan Novel". 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."