Renegade war photographer Maali Almeida has to solve his own murder. Does that sound fun? Perhaps, if there wasn’t so much red-tape to get through. A compulsively readable dark comedy of life, death and everything in between, ‘Chats with the Dead’ by Srilankan author Shehan Karunatilaka whose first book, Chinaman, won the Commonwealth Book Prize, searingly exposes the plight of a country caught in the aftermath of civil war. Its deliciously compelling absurdity holds you in thrall right from the very first page up to its startling denouement, constantly upending its own premise with its staggering humanity.