By Shehan Karunatilaka wrote his Booker Prize-winning novel “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” to give voice to Sri Lanka’s dead. He hoped the ghosts of the country’s bloody past could speak to its troubled present.
Now there is a serious allegation from the former editor of the Daily news . Rajpal Abeynaka claims the fair amount of content has been plagiarized off his work.
Rajpal said in a YouTube interview that he asked Shehan Krunathilaka to find a publisher and shared the manuscript with him in 2011.
Sunil Tantirige, a viewer of the interview said that the allegations could be verified without much trouble.
“In 2019 this story was first published in India by Shehan K as ‘Chats with the Dead’. Why did this lawyer not come out with these allegations then? The Seven Moons is now available online as an electronic version. So if Mr. Abenayaka can provide his manuscript in electronic format, it will be very easy to compare the two using AI software designed to find similarities in published text. A good linguist from a university could also compare the two and determine if one has used the other. So over to you, Mr. Abeynayaka.Said Sunil Thanthirige
