Maali Almeida

Maali Almeida is the main character and second person narrator of the novel. At the start of the novel, Maali wakes up in an unfamiliar realm, which he is convinced is a dreamscape. He looks around at his new reality and tells himself, “For once, you know it’s a dream and you’re happy to wait it out. All things pass, especially dreams” (4). What Maali quickly discovers, however, is that he is not sleeping and dreaming, but that he has died and entered the Afterlife, or the In Between. Throughout his seven days, or moons, in the In Between, Maali struggles to reconcile himself with his short life Down There and his failed attempts to make a name for himself and to exact lasting change for his Sri Lankan country and people.

Prior to his death Maali was a war photographer, or conflict photojournalist. At the...