In Michael Ondaatje’s poem “Buried,” one of these objects is found by monks “sitting upright / buried in Anuradhapura earth” and is compared to “mortar burning the enemy” and “the weight of cannon barrels.” For 10 points each:
[10h] Name these objects. Anil investigates the murder of a skeleton nicknamed “Sailor” during the Sri Lankan Civil War in an Ondaatje novel that ends with the drunk Ananda creating these objects.
ANSWER: statues of the Buddha [accept Buddharūpa; accept similar descriptions such as icons of the Buddha; prompt on partial answers]
[10e] Krishan comes to associate statues of the Buddha with emancipation in Anuk Arudpragasam’s A Passage North, which was shortlisted for this prize in 2021. Ondaatje’s The English Patient won this prize in 1992.
ANSWER: Booker Prize [accept Booker Prize for Fiction or Man Booker Prize; accept Golden Man Booker; reject “International Booker Prize” or “Man Booker International Prize”]
[10m] Before being taken to see his corpse in a pond surrounded by stone Buddhas, this journalist is given a week to expose the atrocities of the Sri Lankan civil war in a Booker-winning novel.
ANSWER: Maali Almeida [or Maali Almeida; accept The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida]
<AMS, British Literature>