Anil's Ghost - Hardcover

Ondaatje, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 077106893X ISBN 13: 9780771068935

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart, 2000

Synopsis

Like Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel, THE ENGLISH PATIENT, ANIL'S GHOST is set during a war, but this is not World War II. This is the sectarian upheaval that ripped Sri Lanka apart in the 1980s and '90s. Anil Tissera, a native Sri Lankan, returns, after 15 years in the United States, as a member of an international human rights fact-finding mission. A forensic anthropologist, she is thrown in with Sarath Diyasena, an archaeologist whose political affiliations, if any, are murky. Together they search for the group behind the organized murders on the island, only to discover evidence of a government-sponsored murder. As Anil begins the investigation, she is caught in a web of politics, paranoia, and tragedy. A poetic meditation on identity and loyalty.

"Ondaatje's novel satisfies one of the most exalted purposes of fiction: to illuminate the human condition through pity and terror. It may well be the capstone of his career." (Publishers Weekly)

About this title

Review:

In his Booker Prize-winning third novel, The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje explored the nature of love and betrayal in wartime. His fourth, Anil's Ghost, is also set during a war, but unlike in World War II, the enemy is difficult to identify in the bloody sectarian upheaval that ripped Sri Lanka apart in the 1980s and '90s. The protagonist, Anil Tissera, a native Sri Lankan, left her homeland at 18 and returns to it 15 years later only as part of an international human rights fact-finding mission. In the intervening years she has become a forensic anthropologist--a career that has landed her in the killing fields of Central America, digging up the victims of Guatemala's dirty war. Now she's come to Sri Lanka on a similar quest. But as she soon learns, there are fundamental differences between her previous assignment and this one:

The bodies turn up weekly now. The height of the terror was 'eighty-eight and 'eighty-nine, but of course it was going on long before that. Every side was killing and hiding the evidence. Every side. This is an unofficial war, no one wants to alienate the foreign powers. So it's secret gangs and squads. Not like Central America. The government was not the only one doing the killing.

In such a situation, it's difficult to know who to trust. Anil's colleague is one Sarath Diyasena, a Sri Lankan archaeologist whose political affiliations, if any, are murky. Together they uncover evidence of a government-sponsored murder in the shape of a skeleton they nickname Sailor. But as Anil begins her investigation into the events surrounding Sailor's death, she finds herself caught in a web of politics, paranoia, and tragedy.

Like its predecessor, the novel explores that territory where the personal and the political intersect in the fulcrum of war. Its style, though, is more straightforward, less densely poetical. While many of Ondaatje's literary trademarks are present--frequent shifts in time, almost hallucinatory imagery, the gradual interweaving of characters' pasts with the present--the prose here is more accessible. This is not to say that the author has forgotten his poetic roots; subtle, evocative images abound. Consider, for example, this description of Anil at the end of the day, standing in a pool of water, "her toes among the white petals, her arms folded as she undressed the day, removing layers of events and incidents so they would no longer be within her." In Anil's Ghost Michael Ondaatje has crafted both a brutal examination of internecine warfare and an enduring meditation on identity, loyalty, and the unbreakable hold the past exerts over the present. --Alix Wilber

From the Publisher:

6 1.5-hour cassettes

About this edition

• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 077106893X
• ISBN 13: 9780771068935
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320