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shombiswas's review against another edition
5.0
Wijedasa Gamini Karunasena takes immense pride in the initials of his name, which were also those of the first great cricketer, the legendary WG Grace. WG is a semi-retired cricket journalist, but truth to be said, he is subsumed by that strange ailment that affects many from the former colonies of the British Empire. He is a Cricket Tragic, a phrase that if you have to ask for the meaning of, you certainly are not deserving of. Not that you would want to be one either, perhaps. WG, for one, has named his son Garfield, after Garfield Sobers, the greatest all-round cricketer there has ever been.
[Reviewer's aside: I know, I know. I have named by son Diego. If the child were a girl, she would have been Serena. Sports tragics know.]
WG’s has a lifetime of watching cricket in Sri Lanka, local, national and international. And a lifetime of heavy drinking of cheap local liquor. He is one of those cantankerous, persnickety old men who are living through a life of reluctant retirement and general dissatisfaction – whose lives haven’t exactly amounted to nothing, but neither have they eventually added up to much of what they had envisioned. And now it is too late.
And it is too late for WG Karunasena. He has a year more to live if he continues with the alcohol abuse. Maybe a couple more if he cuts down to two pegs a day. And as any self-respecting journalist knows, "There is nothing more inspiring than a solid deadline".
WG decides to leave behind something for posterity. He knows that sports matter. As he says - "In 30 years, the world will not care about how I lived… But in a hundred years, Bulgarians will still talk of Letchkov and how he expelled the mighty Germans from the 1994 World Cup with a simple header." He decides to do a documentary on Sri Lankan cricket. He will track down the enigma that is Pradeep Mathew, the left-arm (and sometimes ambidextrous) mystery spinner who was perhaps the greatest exponent of spin bowling of all time. He has played a couple of Tests and One-day Internationals for Sri Lanka, performed none too badly, and then just disappeared from the team and from the public eye. Somehow, nobody seems to mention him at all anymore – it was as if he did not exist. Even his name and his stellar records have been carefully scrubbed off the score-books and public records.
Why was he dropped? Was it merely because he was Tamil, a minority in the war-torn isles? Was it because he had had a fight against authority figures? Was it because he fixed matches? Or is there something more mysterious that lies in wait?
Thus starts perhaps the greatest novel on sports that has come out of our subcontinent. “Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew” by Shehan Karunatilaka is expansive like a glorious Gower cover drive, bright and joyous like a Sehwag flash above extra cover, and yet, somehow, has the gravitas of a steady-the-ship Jacques Kallis innings in a tricky track against excellent bowling.
And it is not a sports novel alone - it is also a travelogue, a novel about the Emerald Isles, in all its beauty, its corruption, and its decrepitude. It's a book about a man's search of purpose, and of a son's search for his father. The panorama is wide.
It is a must-read. Very highly recommended.
First reviewed at The New Indian Express.
[Reviewer's aside: I know, I know. I have named by son Diego. If the child were a girl, she would have been Serena. Sports tragics know.]
WG’s has a lifetime of watching cricket in Sri Lanka, local, national and international. And a lifetime of heavy drinking of cheap local liquor. He is one of those cantankerous, persnickety old men who are living through a life of reluctant retirement and general dissatisfaction – whose lives haven’t exactly amounted to nothing, but neither have they eventually added up to much of what they had envisioned. And now it is too late.
And it is too late for WG Karunasena. He has a year more to live if he continues with the alcohol abuse. Maybe a couple more if he cuts down to two pegs a day. And as any self-respecting journalist knows, "There is nothing more inspiring than a solid deadline".
WG decides to leave behind something for posterity. He knows that sports matter. As he says - "In 30 years, the world will not care about how I lived… But in a hundred years, Bulgarians will still talk of Letchkov and how he expelled the mighty Germans from the 1994 World Cup with a simple header." He decides to do a documentary on Sri Lankan cricket. He will track down the enigma that is Pradeep Mathew, the left-arm (and sometimes ambidextrous) mystery spinner who was perhaps the greatest exponent of spin bowling of all time. He has played a couple of Tests and One-day Internationals for Sri Lanka, performed none too badly, and then just disappeared from the team and from the public eye. Somehow, nobody seems to mention him at all anymore – it was as if he did not exist. Even his name and his stellar records have been carefully scrubbed off the score-books and public records.
Why was he dropped? Was it merely because he was Tamil, a minority in the war-torn isles? Was it because he had had a fight against authority figures? Was it because he fixed matches? Or is there something more mysterious that lies in wait?
Thus starts perhaps the greatest novel on sports that has come out of our subcontinent. “Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew” by Shehan Karunatilaka is expansive like a glorious Gower cover drive, bright and joyous like a Sehwag flash above extra cover, and yet, somehow, has the gravitas of a steady-the-ship Jacques Kallis innings in a tricky track against excellent bowling.
And it is not a sports novel alone - it is also a travelogue, a novel about the Emerald Isles, in all its beauty, its corruption, and its decrepitude. It's a book about a man's search of purpose, and of a son's search for his father. The panorama is wide.
It is a must-read. Very highly recommended.
First reviewed at The New Indian Express.
thimantha's review against another edition
5.0
A journey through the life of a has-been (never-was?) sports journalist in Sri Lanka, capturing the essence of the lives of average Sri Lankans. Don't mistake this for a sports novel. It's not. It's about Sri Lanka; the beautiful island, the people, the passion, the corruption, the gambling and much more. It's a social commentary about the struggles and the pleasures of the people of this island.
Written in short bursts, taking place in times ranging from the 80s to the 2000s, in no specific order, Shehan takes us through a story which keeps the reader hooked right until the last page.
A very original, must read!!
Written in short bursts, taking place in times ranging from the 80s to the 2000s, in no specific order, Shehan takes us through a story which keeps the reader hooked right until the last page.
A very original, must read!!
erikeckel's review against another edition
4.0
The last truly redeeming sports-themed novel I read was Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch. Hornby’s memoir, which recounts his Arsenal soccer obsession, rightfully earned praise for its study of sports affinities and the roles they can play in father-son and even spousal relationships.
Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Legend of Pradeep Mathew is an equally important work. Karunatilaka writes with wit, insight and verve. And the man knows cricket, his vehicle of choice for the exploration of racism, corruption, entitlement, colonialism and even love and affection. While the book runs long, I found my leisure pursuit pick up pace as I invested myself deeper within its pages.
I awoke pleased today and possessing a secret appreciation knowing I could dedicated the afternoon to finishing the story. A kind of luxurious Sunday decadence with no sin, if you will.
There’s a bit of a mystery to the book. No spoilers here. Just an admonition to check out Karunatilaka’s debut novel, which is happy at times, occasionally angry and always affectionate in an earned intimacy with the reader. I rank it up there with Fever Pitch, most certainly.
Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Legend of Pradeep Mathew is an equally important work. Karunatilaka writes with wit, insight and verve. And the man knows cricket, his vehicle of choice for the exploration of racism, corruption, entitlement, colonialism and even love and affection. While the book runs long, I found my leisure pursuit pick up pace as I invested myself deeper within its pages.
I awoke pleased today and possessing a secret appreciation knowing I could dedicated the afternoon to finishing the story. A kind of luxurious Sunday decadence with no sin, if you will.
There’s a bit of a mystery to the book. No spoilers here. Just an admonition to check out Karunatilaka’s debut novel, which is happy at times, occasionally angry and always affectionate in an earned intimacy with the reader. I rank it up there with Fever Pitch, most certainly.
kolez's review against another edition
2.0
This was one tough read. Hard to think how someone not so familiar with our culture can sort of grasp all those innuendos. I sure as hell missed a lot. This is one of those books that you hope would get better and keep on reading. The final 1/4th was the only part that tied up the whole story together for me. Until then I was blinded and distracted which is what the author intended I guess.
He touches a lot of themes about contemporary issues. Maybe a bit too much? From alcoholism, religion, ethnic issues, betting on cricket, corruption in cricket/SLCB/politics, war etc. The writing style which messes up the timeline almost made me DNF at the start.
Maybe in the end it was worth the read, but definitely not going to read this again
He touches a lot of themes about contemporary issues. Maybe a bit too much? From alcoholism, religion, ethnic issues, betting on cricket, corruption in cricket/SLCB/politics, war etc. The writing style which messes up the timeline almost made me DNF at the start.
Maybe in the end it was worth the read, but definitely not going to read this again
mamba_lord's review against another edition
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
stacksoftbr's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
fiddler's review against another edition
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
archytas's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
"Why, you ask, has no one heard of our nation’s greatest cricketer? Here, in no particular order. Wrong place, wrong time, money and laziness. Politics, racism, power cuts, and plain bad luck. If you are unwilling to follow me on the next God-knows-how-many pages, re-read the last two sentences. They are as good a summary as I can give from this side of the bottle."
This is a long novel, whose meandering is more the point than a distraction. Set in the 1990s, Karunatilaka channels W.G. Karunasena, a mid-60s alcoholic and cricket writer who is obsessively chasing down the story of the mysterious 1980s Tamil cricketer Pradeep Mathew, both out of a deep love of the game and its world and out of an inability to think about what else might matter. Mathew's story is deliberately mythic - the more W.G. digs the most fantastical the claims become - and his story almost, but never quite, becomes the story of the country itself.
The book is filled with references which bring joy when you use them to draw inferences - there is history, literature and even dense musical references. Much of the book is written in cricket, a language I am completely without. My father watched the Benson and Hedges 1985 World series in our living room - a key setting of the book - which at least means the names and rough roles of the players were familiar to me. But the significance of a double-bounce, or a ball on the line, which here carry much information about character and setting, were all too often lost on me. For cricket enthusiasts who also love literature, I strongly suspect this is the read of a lifetime. Even as a non-cricket-literate, it was pretty special.
This is simply because Karunatilaka brings his characters so deeply to life. These are not softened people - one of WG's closest friends may or may not be a pedophile, WG is a frankly terrible father and doesn't know it, racist and sexist jokes abound. But they are deeply human, and Karunatilaka extends that humanity to corrupt cricket officials, LTTE enforcers, match fixers and more (not, I will say, to Australian cricketers or commentators. These are pretty uniformly presented as arseholes - the second portrayal for me in so many weeks of Australian sporting dominance as a gross mix of wealthy country privilege and unashamed willingness to destroy the opposition). The Lankans here, and some of the (non-Australian) others, want their country to be better just as they want themselves to be. In the end, the inability to celebrate and nurture Mathew, a Tamil great, is the great tragedy of this novel. That so much joy is lived by those who defy that division is its triumph.
This is a long novel, whose meandering is more the point than a distraction. Set in the 1990s, Karunatilaka channels W.G. Karunasena, a mid-60s alcoholic and cricket writer who is obsessively chasing down the story of the mysterious 1980s Tamil cricketer Pradeep Mathew, both out of a deep love of the game and its world and out of an inability to think about what else might matter. Mathew's story is deliberately mythic - the more W.G. digs the most fantastical the claims become - and his story almost, but never quite, becomes the story of the country itself.
The book is filled with references which bring joy when you use them to draw inferences - there is history, literature and even dense musical references. Much of the book is written in cricket, a language I am completely without. My father watched the Benson and Hedges 1985 World series in our living room - a key setting of the book - which at least means the names and rough roles of the players were familiar to me. But the significance of a double-bounce, or a ball on the line, which here carry much information about character and setting, were all too often lost on me. For cricket enthusiasts who also love literature, I strongly suspect this is the read of a lifetime. Even as a non-cricket-literate, it was pretty special.
This is simply because Karunatilaka brings his characters so deeply to life. These are not softened people - one of WG's closest friends may or may not be a pedophile, WG is a frankly terrible father and doesn't know it, racist and sexist jokes abound. But they are deeply human, and Karunatilaka extends that humanity to corrupt cricket officials, LTTE enforcers, match fixers and more (not, I will say, to Australian cricketers or commentators. These are pretty uniformly presented as arseholes - the second portrayal for me in so many weeks of Australian sporting dominance as a gross mix of wealthy country privilege and unashamed willingness to destroy the opposition). The Lankans here, and some of the (non-Australian) others, want their country to be better just as they want themselves to be. In the end, the inability to celebrate and nurture Mathew, a Tamil great, is the great tragedy of this novel. That so much joy is lived by those who defy that division is its triumph.