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Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew

Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew AuthorShehan KarunatilakaIllustratorLalith KarunathilakeCover artistEranga TennekoonCountrySri LankaLanguageEnglishSet inSri LankaPublisherSelf-published2010Media typePrintPages499Awards2008 Gratiaen Prize2012 DSC Prize for South Asian LiteratureISBN9789555236003 (first edition)LC ClassMLCS 2010/01106 (P) PR9440.9.K378
Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew is a 2010 novel by Shehan Karunatilaka. The book uses cricket as a device to write about Sri Lankan society. It tells the story of an alcoholic journalist's quest to track down a missing cricketer of the 1980s. The book was critically hailed, winning many awards. On 21 May 2012, Chinaman was announced as the regional winner for Asia of the Commonwealth Book Prize and went on to win the overall Commonwealth Book Prize announced on 8 June. It also won the 2012 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and the 2008 Gratiaen Prize. Published to great acclaim in India and the UK, the book was one of the Waterstones 11 selected by British bookseller Waterstones as one of the top debuts of 2011 and was also shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt First Novel Prize.

Plot
The novel documents, in first person narrative, the attempts of its alcoholic writer to reclaim the legacy of one bowler, Pradeep Mathew: never mind that this same narrator might be attempting to recover his own lost greatness by discovering another's. What he finds is a world of thugs, booze, gambling, questionable honor, national interests which might be opposed to the truth, and a web of lies, half-truths, observed falsehoods, cheating and gamesmanship. In the end, our narrator cannot finish his book, because he cannot stay away from drinking, or his own failures. The task falls to others to finish this attempt to find the greatest bowler ever, and the man who might have made the greatness of Sri Lanka's cricket championships.

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