'Karunatilaka is a fearless writer. It also helps that he is astonishingly funny. ' - Roshan Ali, Indian Express

'The wild horses of Shehan Karunatilaka's imagination run fast, wild and true. ' - Jeet Thayil

'Wholly imaginative, [The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises is] a glimpse into the versatility of the form and how far boundaries of reality and absurdity can be stretched to give birth to writings that are truly, and without exaggeration, unforgettable. ' - Sayari Debnath, Scroll.in

'Karunatilaka writes [...] with a sort of gallows humour. His throwaway, acerbic bon mots light up nearly every page. ' - Soumya Bhattacharya, Deccan Chronicle

'[T]he sentences on the page sing out loud—often dirges of anguish, but musical nevertheless. ' - Akhil Sood, Frontline

Shehan Karunatilaka is a Sri Lankan writer whose first book, Chinaman, won the Commonwealth Book Prize, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the Gratiaen Prize, and was shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most original novels to come out of Sri Lanka. His second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, won the Booker Prize 2022.