Shehan Karunatilaka is at a desk at Sort Of Books, in a blue t-shirt, working on a laptop with a bowl, a blue Moomin mug and a notebook beside him.
He is in London to collect his Booker Prize.
Perhaps you can tell from the way he is sitting – hands over the keyboard, head slightly lowered, an air of concentration – that he is writing something extremely important, possibly the opening paragraph of his next novel.
In fact he is booking tickets for something in London.
I met Shehan at Sort Of Books because Mark Ellingham had mentioned him in passing on a walk on Hampstead Heath. The wider story is in the Sort Of Books post; here it is enough that I asked Mark if I could spend the day at Sort Of as a kind of artist in residence, and Mark checked with Nat and Shehan, and they said yes.
That’s me on the carpet, drawing. I made lots of quick sketches, from different angles:
Later the same day, the head of the Booker Prize arrived at the house with Shehan’s award – the physical object.
Nothing about winning a big prize saves you from having to book tickets.
This is one of the portraits in Contain Multitudes, my show at Burgh House, Hampstead, 18-23 August 2026.