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ratings: ★★★★★ (4.8/5)
Genre: Sri Lankan Fiction, Literary Fiction, Sports Fiction, Mystery

Book Review:
Shehan Karunatilaka's ''Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew'' is a dazzling, hilarious, and deeply moving novel that transcends its cricket-themed premise to become one of the finest works of Sri Lankan literature. Winner of the 2008 Gratiaen Prize, this book is a joyous, chaotic, and ultimately heartbreaking masterpiece.

The story is narrated by WG Karunasena, a washed-up, arrack-drinking sports journalist in his twilight years. Convinced his life is nearly over, he becomes obsessed with a single mission: to find the greatest cricketer he ever saw, a mysterious spin bowler named Pradeep Mathew, who vanished without a trace. WG's quest takes him through a labyrinth of memories, tall tales, and dubious witnesses, all while he battles his failing health and dysfunctional family.

But ''Chinaman'' is so much more than a detective story about a missing cricketer. Through WG's rambling, passionate, and often unreliable narration, Karunatilaka paints a vivid and sprawling portrait of Sri Lanka itself. The book is a love letter to cricket, but it is also a searing commentary on the country's politics, its ethnic tensions, its corruption, and its post-colonial identity. Pradeep Mathew's story becomes intertwined with questions of nation, belonging, and the forgotten talents swallowed by history.

The prose is electric, bursting with wit, inventive wordplay, and footnotes that add another layer of humor and insight. The Gratiaen citation rightly praised it as ''witty and thought-provoking... brilliantly sustained... with a number of twists in the plot... and a clever play on the shifting line between truth and fiction.'' Even if you have never watched a cricket match or, as the book's blurb cheekily suggests, find it a ''dull game,'' this book will captivate you. It is a story about obsession, memory, friendship, and the search for meaning in a chaotic world. ''Chinaman'' is an unmissable, unforgettable reading experience.