Latest Review: "The Legend of Pradeep Mathew" by Shehan Karunatilaka

The latest review to our Reviews Section is a piece by Aleksandra Fazlipour on Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, which is available from Graywolf Press.

Here is part of the review:

WG (Wije) Karunasena is a Sri Lankan sportswriter who has been forced into retirement because he is a drunk. He is also on a fast track to an early death. But he can only write when he’s intoxicated, and his lifelong fascinations for cricket and alcohol propel his obsessive search for Pradeep Mathew, a cricketer who had a brief but spectacular career during the late 80s and early 90s. Mathew is able to accomplish impossible and yet for some reason, in spite of his exceptional abilities, he disappears, not only from the cricket field but from the world in general, after playing very few matches, including a test match that takes place in an empty stadium. Struggling to make sense of his life and accomplish something meaningful and lasting, Wije and his neighbor Ari leave behind their families and depart on a journey to locate Mathew. They have both seen Mathew play, which is the only evidence they have that he ever existed. People refuse to speak of him, and all records of him have been erased.

Cricket is the lens through which Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Legend of Pradeep Mathew shows a very telling portrait of the country. While the book is very much about cricket—it is littered with relevant descriptions and diagrams—it would be just as easy (but admittedly less fulfilling) to simply skip the sections of the book that are full of jargon. Because this book isn’t a book about cricket per se, but about how Pradeep Mathew became a legend when people simply stopped talking about him. His legend outlasted his presence in Sri Lanka, and fueled the obsession that carried Wije through the last few alcohol-blurred years of his life.

Click here to read the entire review.