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Anil's Ghost
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With his first novel since the internationally acclaimed The English Patient, Booker Prize-winning author Michael Ondaatje gives us a work displaying all the richness of imagery and language and the piercing emotional truth that we have come to know as the hallmarks of his writing.
Anil’s Ghost transports us to Sri Lanka, a country steeped in centuries of tradition, now forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of civil war. Into this maelstrom steps Anil Tissera, a young woman born in Sri Lanka, educated in England and America, who returns to her homeland as a forensic anthropologist sent by an international human rights group to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island. What follows is a story about love, about family, about identity, about the unknown enemy, about the quest to unlock the hidden past–a story propelled by a riveting mystery. Unfolding against the deeply evocative background of Sri Lanka’s landscape and ancient civilization, Anil’s Ghost is a literary spellbinder–Michael Ondaatje’s most powerful novel yet.
With his first novel since the internationally acclaimed The English Patient, Booker Prize-winning author Michael Ondaatje gives us a work displaying all the richness of imagery and language and the piercing emotional truth that we have come to know as the hallmarks of his writing.
Anil’s Ghost transports us to Sri Lanka, a country steeped in centuries of tradition, now forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of civil war. Into this maelstrom steps Anil Tissera, a young woman born in Sri Lanka, educated in England and America, who returns to her homeland as a forensic anthropologist sent by an international human rights group to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island. What follows is a story about love, about family, about identity, about the unknown enemy, about the quest to unlock the hidden past–a story propelled by a riveting mystery. Unfolding against the deeply evocative background of Sri Lanka’s landscape and ancient civilization, Anil’s Ghost is a literary spellbinder–Michael Ondaatje’s most powerful novel yet.
311 pages, Paperback
First published March 30, 2000
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About the author
Michael Ondaatje
117Ìýbooks4,041ÌýfollowersPhilip Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer, and essayist, renowned for his contributions to both poetry and prose. He was born in Colombo in 1943, to a family of Tamil and Burgher descent. Ondaatje emigrated to Canada in 1962, where he pursued his education, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto and a Master of Arts from Queen's University.
Ondaatje’s literary career began in 1967 with his poetry collection The Dainty Monsters, followed by his celebrated The Collected Works of Billy the Kid in 1970. His poetry earned him numerous accolades, including the Governor General’s Award for his collection There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do: Poems 1973�1978 in 1979. He published 13 books of poetry, exploring diverse themes and poetic forms.
In 1992, Ondaatje gained international fame with the publication of his novel The English Patient, which won the Booker Prize and was later adapted into an Academy Award-winning film. His other notable works include In the Skin of a Lion (1987), Anil’s Ghost (2000), and Divisadero (2007), which won the Governor General’s Award. Ondaatje’s novel Warlight (2018) was longlisted for the Booker Prize.
Aside from his writing, Ondaatje has been influential in fostering Canadian literature. He served as an editor at Coach House Books, contributing to the promotion of new Canadian voices. He also co-edited Brick, A Literary Journal, and worked as a founding trustee of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry.
Ondaatje’s work spans various forms, including plays, documentaries, and essays. His 2002 book The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film earned him critical acclaim and won several awards. His plays have been adapted from his novels, including The Collected Works of Billy the Kid and Coming Through Slaughter.
Over his career, Ondaatje has been honored with several prestigious awards. He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1988, upgraded to Companion in 2016, and received the Sri Lanka Ratna in 2005. In 2016, a new species of spider, Brignolia ondaatjei, was named in his honor.
Ondaatje’s personal life is also intertwined with his literary pursuits. He has been married to novelist Linda Spalding, and the couple co-edits Brick. He has two children from his first marriage and is the brother of philanthropist Sir Christopher Ondaatje. He was also involved in a public stand against the PEN American Center's decision to honor Charlie Hebdo in 2015, citing concerns about the publication's anti-Islamic content.
Ondaatje’s enduring influence on literature and his ability to blend personal history with universal themes in his writing continue to shape Canadian and world literature.
Ondaatje’s literary career began in 1967 with his poetry collection The Dainty Monsters, followed by his celebrated The Collected Works of Billy the Kid in 1970. His poetry earned him numerous accolades, including the Governor General’s Award for his collection There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do: Poems 1973�1978 in 1979. He published 13 books of poetry, exploring diverse themes and poetic forms.
In 1992, Ondaatje gained international fame with the publication of his novel The English Patient, which won the Booker Prize and was later adapted into an Academy Award-winning film. His other notable works include In the Skin of a Lion (1987), Anil’s Ghost (2000), and Divisadero (2007), which won the Governor General’s Award. Ondaatje’s novel Warlight (2018) was longlisted for the Booker Prize.
Aside from his writing, Ondaatje has been influential in fostering Canadian literature. He served as an editor at Coach House Books, contributing to the promotion of new Canadian voices. He also co-edited Brick, A Literary Journal, and worked as a founding trustee of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry.
Ondaatje’s work spans various forms, including plays, documentaries, and essays. His 2002 book The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film earned him critical acclaim and won several awards. His plays have been adapted from his novels, including The Collected Works of Billy the Kid and Coming Through Slaughter.
Over his career, Ondaatje has been honored with several prestigious awards. He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1988, upgraded to Companion in 2016, and received the Sri Lanka Ratna in 2005. In 2016, a new species of spider, Brignolia ondaatjei, was named in his honor.
Ondaatje’s personal life is also intertwined with his literary pursuits. He has been married to novelist Linda Spalding, and the couple co-edits Brick. He has two children from his first marriage and is the brother of philanthropist Sir Christopher Ondaatje. He was also involved in a public stand against the PEN American Center's decision to honor Charlie Hebdo in 2015, citing concerns about the publication's anti-Islamic content.
Ondaatje’s enduring influence on literature and his ability to blend personal history with universal themes in his writing continue to shape Canadian and world literature.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,551 reviews
September 27, 2015
I read some people in Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ saying that this book is composed of fragments. I would rather say it is composed of silences between them. So many things are untold in “Anil’s Ghostâ€�, but can be perceived and felt so clearly. To me this eloquent mosaic of silences was as important, as beautiful and poetic as Ondaatje’s words in this fragmented story. And what can better transmit the fear of the people caught amidst the Sri Lanka civil war than silence?
Ondaatje loosely tells us about the situation in Sri Lanka during some of the worst years of the civil war, where people felt trapped in the conflict between the government, the antigovernment insurgents and the separatist guerillas. During these years people were disappearing in big numbers, their bodies later appearing in the sea, rivers, fields or crowded hospitals. More often, they became lost forever. The three conflicting groups were the main players in this terror, none better in its methods than the other, which meant that the only way for people to survive was keeping their heads low and being silent. Not asking questions. Not looking for the answers, not wanting the truth.
Anil, a forensic pathologist who left Sri Lanka, her country of origin, fifteen years ago, comes back on a seven week mission to investigate the infringements of the human rights in the country. She is determined to identify a victim whose bones were found in the area protected by the government. Will her quest for truth be successful? Could naming one victim help her name and stand for all of them? Does it really matter which group is responsible? Can the truth be more important than peace?
Anil’s local partner in the investigation is Sarath, a Sri Lankan archeologist, who finds solace in his studies. Archeological artefacts serve him as an anchor, the only things that are stable in his life, never changing throughout thousands of years. Sarath seems to Anil remote and impenetrable, difficult to trust because of his contacts in the government.
And then there is Gamini, Sarath’s younger brother, one of the most beautifully crafted characters I have met in my literary life. Gamini is a doctor who is not capable of sleep, except for maybe a short moment in a bed of a ward, who almost lives in the hospital, never finding peace anywhere else, who is afraid of the dead, afraid to see their faces, lest he recognizes them.
A doctor, a forensic pathologist and an archeologist. A study of the living, the dead and the immortality.
The book evolves slowly, taking us back and forth in time, peeling off the layers of its characters, getting us closer to their nature, revealing one startling and uncomfortable truth after another, until we are sucked in, immersed in this wearisome journey and until it spits us out burnt-out and wasted and, perhaps, a little less ignorant.
Ondaatje loosely tells us about the situation in Sri Lanka during some of the worst years of the civil war, where people felt trapped in the conflict between the government, the antigovernment insurgents and the separatist guerillas. During these years people were disappearing in big numbers, their bodies later appearing in the sea, rivers, fields or crowded hospitals. More often, they became lost forever. The three conflicting groups were the main players in this terror, none better in its methods than the other, which meant that the only way for people to survive was keeping their heads low and being silent. Not asking questions. Not looking for the answers, not wanting the truth.
Anil, a forensic pathologist who left Sri Lanka, her country of origin, fifteen years ago, comes back on a seven week mission to investigate the infringements of the human rights in the country. She is determined to identify a victim whose bones were found in the area protected by the government. Will her quest for truth be successful? Could naming one victim help her name and stand for all of them? Does it really matter which group is responsible? Can the truth be more important than peace?
Anil’s local partner in the investigation is Sarath, a Sri Lankan archeologist, who finds solace in his studies. Archeological artefacts serve him as an anchor, the only things that are stable in his life, never changing throughout thousands of years. Sarath seems to Anil remote and impenetrable, difficult to trust because of his contacts in the government.
And then there is Gamini, Sarath’s younger brother, one of the most beautifully crafted characters I have met in my literary life. Gamini is a doctor who is not capable of sleep, except for maybe a short moment in a bed of a ward, who almost lives in the hospital, never finding peace anywhere else, who is afraid of the dead, afraid to see their faces, lest he recognizes them.
A doctor, a forensic pathologist and an archeologist. A study of the living, the dead and the immortality.
The book evolves slowly, taking us back and forth in time, peeling off the layers of its characters, getting us closer to their nature, revealing one startling and uncomfortable truth after another, until we are sucked in, immersed in this wearisome journey and until it spits us out burnt-out and wasted and, perhaps, a little less ignorant.
August 17, 2017
In a fearful nation, public sorrow was stamped down by the climate of uncertainty. If a father protested a son’s death, it was feared another family member would be killed. If people you knew disappeared, there was a chance they might stay alive if you did not cause trouble. This was a scarring psychosis in the country. Death, loss, was ‘unfinished,� so you could not walk through it. There had been years of night visitations, kidnappings or murders in broad daylight. The only chance was that the creatures who fought would consume themselves. All that was left of law was a belief in an eventual revenge towards those who had power.Anil is an expat Sri Lankan, expert in the forensics of old bones. She returns to Sri Lanka to examine archeological remains and discovers evidence of recent atrocities. This is a portrait of a Sri Lanka riven with murderous conflict, a fascist state in which dissent yields death. Thousand are murdered on an ongoing basis, and no evidence of wrongdoing will be allowed to reach daylight.
Anil fights her own memories of life in Sri Lanka, family, relationships. There are several memorable characters, including a disgraced anthropologist reduced to blindness and an austere life that he found satisfying, another anthropologist who gets Anil involved in the atrocity evidence. It is very interesting. Recommended
August 30, 2018
My least favourite Ondaatje book. It all felt a bit flat to me. So much so that I'm struggling to think of anything interesting to say about it. Perhaps the main problem is the central character Anil who never came alive for me. She's something of a cliché, the career woman floundering in an affair with a married man. There's not much psychology in his creation of her. I never quite found her plausible, likeable or even interesting. Odd, because we're told too much about her rather than not enough. The most memorable thing she does in the novel is stab her boyfriend in the arm when he won't let go of her hair. This happens in America and seemed a wholly gratuitous and melodramatic gesture which had no follow up. The male characters were much more successful.
Anil's Ghost has all the ingredients to be a bewitching novel. As usual Ondaatje uses his novels to learn and write about exotic professions. Here we have a forensic pathologist, an archaeologist, a surgeon, an epigraphist. The setting is war torn Sri Lanka so he's writing about his native country. And yet all its compelling components never fell into place for me. Neither was the writing as inspired as is generally the case with him.
Ondaatje is brilliant at creating all the components of a thriller and then wilfully ignoring the simple formula for thrillers. The central quest here is to identify a skeleton and establish it's a murder victim of government forces. A kind of mystical sculptor is employed to give the skull features. This part of the novel didn't work for me. One night this man stabs himself in the neck, another bit of gratuitous melodrama that echoed Anil's stabbing of her boyfriend. I was never sure what all the hard, dangerous work was likely to achieve. No one, after all, is any doubt that government forces are murdering people. The identity of the skeleton, which might have been a compelling mystery, is passed over as of little interest to Anil and her companion. They simply need to confirm that his death was recent.
The characters are all solitary individuals, some by design, some by default. I'm not quite sure why no one in the novel was capable of sustaining a relationship. Is Ondaatje saying it's this failing that leads a country to fight with itself? Ultimately, I don't think I understood this novel very well, whether that's my fault or his I'm not sure�
Anil's Ghost has all the ingredients to be a bewitching novel. As usual Ondaatje uses his novels to learn and write about exotic professions. Here we have a forensic pathologist, an archaeologist, a surgeon, an epigraphist. The setting is war torn Sri Lanka so he's writing about his native country. And yet all its compelling components never fell into place for me. Neither was the writing as inspired as is generally the case with him.
Ondaatje is brilliant at creating all the components of a thriller and then wilfully ignoring the simple formula for thrillers. The central quest here is to identify a skeleton and establish it's a murder victim of government forces. A kind of mystical sculptor is employed to give the skull features. This part of the novel didn't work for me. One night this man stabs himself in the neck, another bit of gratuitous melodrama that echoed Anil's stabbing of her boyfriend. I was never sure what all the hard, dangerous work was likely to achieve. No one, after all, is any doubt that government forces are murdering people. The identity of the skeleton, which might have been a compelling mystery, is passed over as of little interest to Anil and her companion. They simply need to confirm that his death was recent.
The characters are all solitary individuals, some by design, some by default. I'm not quite sure why no one in the novel was capable of sustaining a relationship. Is Ondaatje saying it's this failing that leads a country to fight with itself? Ultimately, I don't think I understood this novel very well, whether that's my fault or his I'm not sure�
June 10, 2019
Great writer, impressive book.
August 31, 2016
It’s the civil war in Sri Lanka. Anil, the novel’s heroine, is a forensic anthropologist and part of a team investigating possible war crimes. She is paired for the investigation with a government-selected archaeologist named Sarath, an enigmatic man 16 years her senior. Together Anil and Sarath find four skeletons whom they nickname Tinker, Tailor, Soldier and Sailor, the last a source of obsessive fascination. The task is to give Sailor back his identity in order to incriminate the government of war crimes. In the process Anil will have her own identity given back to her.
As you’d expect from Ondjaate this is a novel brimming with beautiful prose. Its central theme is a kind of archaeology of the soul. Anil in the course of the novel will sift through layers of the soil of her own being and of her native country’s history, raising ghosts. On one level it’s a detective story but runs much deeper than that. Though not quite as far reaching as The English Patient it shares a similar structure - a mosaic of fragmented events that are eventually artfully interlocked.
As you’d expect from Ondjaate this is a novel brimming with beautiful prose. Its central theme is a kind of archaeology of the soul. Anil in the course of the novel will sift through layers of the soil of her own being and of her native country’s history, raising ghosts. On one level it’s a detective story but runs much deeper than that. Though not quite as far reaching as The English Patient it shares a similar structure - a mosaic of fragmented events that are eventually artfully interlocked.
April 12, 2012
Against the obscenity of large numbers
When a writer, dauntless and unflinching, turns his piercing gaze on mass murder, how does he drag it back into the realm of the human? In Bolano gave to each and every one of the women murdered in Santa Teresa (Ciudad Juarez), a name, or the clothes they were wearing, or where they were murdered, or, at the very least, how they were found and what happened to the corpse afterwards. He turns each one into an individual, even in the relentless cataloguing of their deaths we never lose sight of the individual human being, loved and missed and mourned. Some 300 pages that retain a steadfast sobriety, as any descent into bathos would become unbearable, self-defeating. Now, that is perhaps just possible when dealing with numbers that creep into the hundreds, but what do you do with this particular breathtaking footnote of history? The civil war that flared up in Sri Lanka in 1983: by early 2000, 18 years of war had claimed the lives of more than 64,000, mostly civilians. Sixty four thousand. Sixty four thousand.
One village can speak for many villages. One victim can speak for many victims. In a sixth century Buddhist monks' burial midden, located in a government archaeological preserve, four modern skeletons are found. Anil Tissera is a forensic pathologist, sent by a Geneva Human Rights organization, teamed with a Colombo archaeologist in a seven week project as a gesture to placate trading partners in the West. Anil and her partner name these four skeletons Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor. Sailor is the only skeleton with a skull. They work to uncover the truth of his particular fate. Proof of one type of crime, that will speak for many crimes. One victim that will speak for many victims. But at a time of war the truth is a flame against a lake of petrol. Anil's status as a delegate of a Western organization might protect her - but what of her colleague?
Ondaatje uses a narrative style that skirts around the story. Obtuse, dislocated, off-centre, like Anil herself, born in Sri Lanka, now ex-pat, she has created a new centre of self around her intellect and her scientific, rational approach to life, an approach which holds her at a distance, protects her from pain. The narrative too holds us at a distance which makes the swift and sudden incursion of horror all the more intense. Gradually, like the reader, Anil is made to look straight at the face of death, rather than busying herself with the details of forensic evidence. In a process that reflects precisely what this novel does, Ananda, the artist, recreates an individual face out of the skull. But Ananda has lost his wife in the terror, so the face is peaceful: "It's what he wants of the dead."
Anil rose and walked back into the dark rooms. She could no longer look at the face, saw only Ananda's wife in every aspect of it. She sat down in one of the large cane chairs in the dining room and began weeping. ... Her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she could see the rectangular shape of a painting and beside it Ananda standing still, looking through the blackness at her.
When a writer, dauntless and unflinching, turns his piercing gaze on mass murder, how does he drag it back into the realm of the human? In Bolano gave to each and every one of the women murdered in Santa Teresa (Ciudad Juarez), a name, or the clothes they were wearing, or where they were murdered, or, at the very least, how they were found and what happened to the corpse afterwards. He turns each one into an individual, even in the relentless cataloguing of their deaths we never lose sight of the individual human being, loved and missed and mourned. Some 300 pages that retain a steadfast sobriety, as any descent into bathos would become unbearable, self-defeating. Now, that is perhaps just possible when dealing with numbers that creep into the hundreds, but what do you do with this particular breathtaking footnote of history? The civil war that flared up in Sri Lanka in 1983: by early 2000, 18 years of war had claimed the lives of more than 64,000, mostly civilians. Sixty four thousand. Sixty four thousand.
One village can speak for many villages. One victim can speak for many victims. In a sixth century Buddhist monks' burial midden, located in a government archaeological preserve, four modern skeletons are found. Anil Tissera is a forensic pathologist, sent by a Geneva Human Rights organization, teamed with a Colombo archaeologist in a seven week project as a gesture to placate trading partners in the West. Anil and her partner name these four skeletons Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor. Sailor is the only skeleton with a skull. They work to uncover the truth of his particular fate. Proof of one type of crime, that will speak for many crimes. One victim that will speak for many victims. But at a time of war the truth is a flame against a lake of petrol. Anil's status as a delegate of a Western organization might protect her - but what of her colleague?
Ondaatje uses a narrative style that skirts around the story. Obtuse, dislocated, off-centre, like Anil herself, born in Sri Lanka, now ex-pat, she has created a new centre of self around her intellect and her scientific, rational approach to life, an approach which holds her at a distance, protects her from pain. The narrative too holds us at a distance which makes the swift and sudden incursion of horror all the more intense. Gradually, like the reader, Anil is made to look straight at the face of death, rather than busying herself with the details of forensic evidence. In a process that reflects precisely what this novel does, Ananda, the artist, recreates an individual face out of the skull. But Ananda has lost his wife in the terror, so the face is peaceful: "It's what he wants of the dead."
Anil rose and walked back into the dark rooms. She could no longer look at the face, saw only Ananda's wife in every aspect of it. She sat down in one of the large cane chairs in the dining room and began weeping. ... Her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she could see the rectangular shape of a painting and beside it Ananda standing still, looking through the blackness at her.
September 4, 2023
I tried to read this before, but I couldn't get much past page 80. This time, I couldn't put it down, which just reinforces my belief that there's a right time and a wrong time to read each book. This time, I'd been prepared by The Ministry of Special Cases and "The Caretaker," a story in Anthony Doerr's The Shell Collector. I wonder, now, about my recent attraction to refugee fiction or desaparecido fiction. What, exactly, am I looking for? What have I lost, or left behind?
Ondaatje's characters are as complex and interesting as Sri Lanka. I think the shifting perspectives in the different sections might have put me off the first go-round. When I stopped reading for the night at the end of a character's section, the book made more sense. The events and constant suspicion/paranoia that are inevitable in an environment where people keep disappearing while the "enemy" is an unknown held the different sections together nicely. The lack of perfect resolution at the end fit, too.
Ondaatje's writing is frequently lyrical:
"Patterns of death always surrounded him. In his work he felt he was somehow the link between the mortality of flesh and bone and the immortality of an image on rock, or even, more strangely, its immortality as a result of faith or an idea. So the removal of a wise sixth-century head, the dropping off of arms and hands of rock as a result of the fatigue of centuries, existed alongside human fate. He would hold statues two thousand years old in his arms. Or place his hand against old, warm rock that had been cut into a human shape. He found comfort in seeing his dark flesh against it. This was his pleasure. Not conversation or the education of others or power, but simply to place his hand against a gal vihara, a living stone whose temperature was dependent on the hour, whose look of porousness would change depending on rain or a quick twilight.
"This rock hand could have been his wife's hand. It had a similar darkness and age to it, a familiar softness."
This gave me a lot to think about: a fifth-century Chinese society that put music at the heart of its civilization, the qualities of any writer, temple stones being the recipients of confessions, understanding gained by studying weaknesses, not strengths.
I'd like to read more by the author, who's published more poetry than anything else.
Ondaatje's characters are as complex and interesting as Sri Lanka. I think the shifting perspectives in the different sections might have put me off the first go-round. When I stopped reading for the night at the end of a character's section, the book made more sense. The events and constant suspicion/paranoia that are inevitable in an environment where people keep disappearing while the "enemy" is an unknown held the different sections together nicely. The lack of perfect resolution at the end fit, too.
Ondaatje's writing is frequently lyrical:
"Patterns of death always surrounded him. In his work he felt he was somehow the link between the mortality of flesh and bone and the immortality of an image on rock, or even, more strangely, its immortality as a result of faith or an idea. So the removal of a wise sixth-century head, the dropping off of arms and hands of rock as a result of the fatigue of centuries, existed alongside human fate. He would hold statues two thousand years old in his arms. Or place his hand against old, warm rock that had been cut into a human shape. He found comfort in seeing his dark flesh against it. This was his pleasure. Not conversation or the education of others or power, but simply to place his hand against a gal vihara, a living stone whose temperature was dependent on the hour, whose look of porousness would change depending on rain or a quick twilight.
"This rock hand could have been his wife's hand. It had a similar darkness and age to it, a familiar softness."
This gave me a lot to think about: a fifth-century Chinese society that put music at the heart of its civilization, the qualities of any writer, temple stones being the recipients of confessions, understanding gained by studying weaknesses, not strengths.
I'd like to read more by the author, who's published more poetry than anything else.
October 30, 2024
It’s a violent, eerie, surreal novel about war crimes, the meaning of identity, and the unnecessary brutalities of civil war and unrest. It's definitely a haunting read.
Note- this was one of my early 2009 Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ reviews, which was Facebook Book Shelf. The days before Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ morphed into its own social media site. I will have to reread and expand on this.
Note- this was one of my early 2009 Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ reviews, which was Facebook Book Shelf. The days before Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ morphed into its own social media site. I will have to reread and expand on this.
November 7, 2019
When I’ve been digging and I’m tired and don’t want to do any more, I think how it could be me in the grave I’m working on. I wouldn’t want someone to stop digging for me ...
Anil Tissera is a forensic anthropologist, educated in England and America, but born in Sri Lanka, an expatriate not unlike the author himself. She comes back to the country of her birth, sent by a human rights organization to investigate allegation of crimes against humanity. Anil firmly believes that the truth shall set us free, and is diligent in trying to use science and hard facts to make her case, yet her journey is hampered by terrible secrets.
‘Most of time in our world, truth is just opinion.�
The observation comes from Sarath, an archeologist appointed as her direct supervisor by the government. He has stayed behind when others left the country, taking refuge in the studies of the past and hoping the violence will pass by him. ( I love history, the intimacy of entering all those landscapes. Like entering a dream. Someone nudges a stone away and there’s a story. ) Sarath tries to warn Anil about the dangers of careless words in a country engaged in a violent civil war, but sooner or later his conscience will clash with his survival instincts.
In a fearful nation, public sorrow was stamped down by the climate of uncertainty. If a father protested a son’s death, it was feared another family member would be killed. If people you knew disappeared, there was a chance they might stay alive if you did not cause trouble. This was the scarring psychosis in the country.
For me, this novel is every bit as powerful and evocative as ‘The English Patient�, with an added layer of pathos coming from the blood connection of the author with the tragedy of his country. Anil and Sarath, with later in the novel Gamini the surgeon and Ananda the painter of eyes, are the tools Ondaatje deploys to pull back the veil of silence and secrecy from the horrors of the civil war. To remain silent and aloof would have probably been a betrayal for him. The numerous atrocities described in the novel are soul crushing, yet the greatest achievement I think is in the little details that make Anil and the others human in their frailty and despair. We get to know Anil, the anchor of the whole story, though flashbacks of her childhood on the island, her studies, her failed first marriage and later her affair with a married man, a tender connection with a fellow forensic investigator (‘Between Heartbeats� is such an apt chapter title) and a nervous breakdown. In the present, she rediscovers the lush tropical scenery, the noisy street life and the spicy food of her homeland while still pining for her distant lover and listening to Steve Earle � ‘Fearless Heart� on her walkman. Sarath, Gamini and Ananda get their own backstories, as the main plot, such as it is in this multilayered novel, deals with the study of a skeleton nicknamed ‘Sailor�.
“Nothing lasts�, Palipana told them. “It is an old dream. Art burns, dissolves. And to be loved with the irony of history � that isn’t much.� He said this in his first class to his archeology students. He had been talking about books and art, about the ‘ascendancy of the idea� being often the only survivor.
Palipana is the mentor of Sarath in his archeological studies. Here he reiterates one of the themes dear to Ondaatje: the role of art in a world gone mad. We will be pulled out of the ashes by the lessons of history and by the vision of artists, if only we are capable of listening to them. One of the the most memorable scenes for me in the book is a repeat of a similar act from the previous Ondaatje novel. There, an Indian soldier takes a nurse to a ruined church and, using ropes, pulleys and torches, illuminates the paintings of saints on the remaining walls. The moment is well captured in the movie version of ‘The English Patient�. Here, Sarath and his teacher go to the ancient cities on the island.
There are images carved into or painted on rock � a perspective of a village seen from the height of a nearby hill, a single line depicting a woman’s back bent over a child � that have altered Sarath’s perception of his world. Years ago he and Palipana entered unknown rock darknesses, lit a match and saw hints of colour.
Those images in caves through the smoke and firelight remain his guiding light and his anchor in the present troubles.
Sarath has a brother, Gamini, who works as a surgeon in the emergency room of a hospital in Colombo. Although clearly struggling with depression and witnessing daily the human cost of the war, Gamini has not given up on humanity. He saves what lives he can and eliminates everything else from his life, including sleep and a home, as trivialities.
This was when he stopped believing in man’s rule on earth. He turned away from every person who stood up for a war. Or the principle of one’s land, or pride of ownership, or even personal rights. All of these motives ended up somehow in the arms of careless power. One was no worse and no better than the enemy. He believed only in the mothers sleeping against their children, the great sexuality of spirit in them, the sexuality of care, so the children would be confident and safe during the night.
We would all live in a better world if we refused to embrace any cause that calls on us to hate or to kill other human beings. As Howard Zinn once said : “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.� Gamini is even more brief:
Just no more high horses, please. This is a war on foot.
Ananda is another casualty of the war. A former artist and restaurator, he turns to drink and backbreaking labor after his wife is kidnapped, never to be seen again. He is pulled into the work of Anil and Sarath in order to help identify a human skeleton discovered in an ancient cave. Anil believes it is of recent, not archeological origins, and wants to make ‘Sailor� the keystone of her case. Ananda used to paint eyes on the statues of saints. In Sri Lanka that means mostly Buddhas, and the operation is held in high esteem since ancient times.
‘Without the eye there is not just blindness, there is nothing. There is no existence. The artificer brings to life sight and truth and presence. Later he will be honored with gifts.
Ondaatje uses the local artist as a path to redemption, but before we get there, all four of the main characters will go through hell and back. I will try to give no spoilers other than to say you cannot escape from the horrors of a civil war. You can only survive, if you are lucky. And you can try to make the next one less likely to happen, if you have a conscience and the courage to speak out. For Sri Lanka, any solution would have to come from inside, as Gamini gives voice to his disillusion in the so-called Western democracies:
‘American movies, English books � remember how they all end? The American or the Englishman gets on a plane and leaves. That’s it. The camera leaves with him. He looks out of the window at Mombasa or Vietnam or Jakarta, someplace now he can look at through the clouds. The tired hero. A couple of words to the girl beside him. He’s going home. So the war, to all purposes, is over. That’s enough reality for the West. It’s probably the history of the last two hundred years of Western political writing. Go home. Write a book. Hit the circuit.�
For the artist, the redemption is symbolic, as in the final pages of the novel Ananda is called to put back together a giant statue of Buddha that was blown to bits.
The face. It’s one hundred chips and splinters of stone brought together, merged, with the shadow of bamboo across its cheek. All its life until now the statue had never felt a human shadow. It had looked over these hot fields towards green terraces in the distant north. It had seen wars and offered peace or irony to those dying under it. Now sunlight hit the seams of its face, as if it were sewn roughly together. He wouldn’t hide that.
For the countless victims of the war, the new painted eyes on the restored Buddha offer a brief epitaph as they watch birds flying towards distant hills:
A small brave heart. In the heights she loved and in the dark she feared
Anil Tissera is a forensic anthropologist, educated in England and America, but born in Sri Lanka, an expatriate not unlike the author himself. She comes back to the country of her birth, sent by a human rights organization to investigate allegation of crimes against humanity. Anil firmly believes that the truth shall set us free, and is diligent in trying to use science and hard facts to make her case, yet her journey is hampered by terrible secrets.
‘Most of time in our world, truth is just opinion.�
The observation comes from Sarath, an archeologist appointed as her direct supervisor by the government. He has stayed behind when others left the country, taking refuge in the studies of the past and hoping the violence will pass by him. ( I love history, the intimacy of entering all those landscapes. Like entering a dream. Someone nudges a stone away and there’s a story. ) Sarath tries to warn Anil about the dangers of careless words in a country engaged in a violent civil war, but sooner or later his conscience will clash with his survival instincts.
In a fearful nation, public sorrow was stamped down by the climate of uncertainty. If a father protested a son’s death, it was feared another family member would be killed. If people you knew disappeared, there was a chance they might stay alive if you did not cause trouble. This was the scarring psychosis in the country.
For me, this novel is every bit as powerful and evocative as ‘The English Patient�, with an added layer of pathos coming from the blood connection of the author with the tragedy of his country. Anil and Sarath, with later in the novel Gamini the surgeon and Ananda the painter of eyes, are the tools Ondaatje deploys to pull back the veil of silence and secrecy from the horrors of the civil war. To remain silent and aloof would have probably been a betrayal for him. The numerous atrocities described in the novel are soul crushing, yet the greatest achievement I think is in the little details that make Anil and the others human in their frailty and despair. We get to know Anil, the anchor of the whole story, though flashbacks of her childhood on the island, her studies, her failed first marriage and later her affair with a married man, a tender connection with a fellow forensic investigator (‘Between Heartbeats� is such an apt chapter title) and a nervous breakdown. In the present, she rediscovers the lush tropical scenery, the noisy street life and the spicy food of her homeland while still pining for her distant lover and listening to Steve Earle � ‘Fearless Heart� on her walkman. Sarath, Gamini and Ananda get their own backstories, as the main plot, such as it is in this multilayered novel, deals with the study of a skeleton nicknamed ‘Sailor�.
“Nothing lasts�, Palipana told them. “It is an old dream. Art burns, dissolves. And to be loved with the irony of history � that isn’t much.� He said this in his first class to his archeology students. He had been talking about books and art, about the ‘ascendancy of the idea� being often the only survivor.
Palipana is the mentor of Sarath in his archeological studies. Here he reiterates one of the themes dear to Ondaatje: the role of art in a world gone mad. We will be pulled out of the ashes by the lessons of history and by the vision of artists, if only we are capable of listening to them. One of the the most memorable scenes for me in the book is a repeat of a similar act from the previous Ondaatje novel. There, an Indian soldier takes a nurse to a ruined church and, using ropes, pulleys and torches, illuminates the paintings of saints on the remaining walls. The moment is well captured in the movie version of ‘The English Patient�. Here, Sarath and his teacher go to the ancient cities on the island.
There are images carved into or painted on rock � a perspective of a village seen from the height of a nearby hill, a single line depicting a woman’s back bent over a child � that have altered Sarath’s perception of his world. Years ago he and Palipana entered unknown rock darknesses, lit a match and saw hints of colour.
Those images in caves through the smoke and firelight remain his guiding light and his anchor in the present troubles.
Sarath has a brother, Gamini, who works as a surgeon in the emergency room of a hospital in Colombo. Although clearly struggling with depression and witnessing daily the human cost of the war, Gamini has not given up on humanity. He saves what lives he can and eliminates everything else from his life, including sleep and a home, as trivialities.
This was when he stopped believing in man’s rule on earth. He turned away from every person who stood up for a war. Or the principle of one’s land, or pride of ownership, or even personal rights. All of these motives ended up somehow in the arms of careless power. One was no worse and no better than the enemy. He believed only in the mothers sleeping against their children, the great sexuality of spirit in them, the sexuality of care, so the children would be confident and safe during the night.
We would all live in a better world if we refused to embrace any cause that calls on us to hate or to kill other human beings. As Howard Zinn once said : “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.� Gamini is even more brief:
Just no more high horses, please. This is a war on foot.
Ananda is another casualty of the war. A former artist and restaurator, he turns to drink and backbreaking labor after his wife is kidnapped, never to be seen again. He is pulled into the work of Anil and Sarath in order to help identify a human skeleton discovered in an ancient cave. Anil believes it is of recent, not archeological origins, and wants to make ‘Sailor� the keystone of her case. Ananda used to paint eyes on the statues of saints. In Sri Lanka that means mostly Buddhas, and the operation is held in high esteem since ancient times.
‘Without the eye there is not just blindness, there is nothing. There is no existence. The artificer brings to life sight and truth and presence. Later he will be honored with gifts.
Ondaatje uses the local artist as a path to redemption, but before we get there, all four of the main characters will go through hell and back. I will try to give no spoilers other than to say you cannot escape from the horrors of a civil war. You can only survive, if you are lucky. And you can try to make the next one less likely to happen, if you have a conscience and the courage to speak out. For Sri Lanka, any solution would have to come from inside, as Gamini gives voice to his disillusion in the so-called Western democracies:
‘American movies, English books � remember how they all end? The American or the Englishman gets on a plane and leaves. That’s it. The camera leaves with him. He looks out of the window at Mombasa or Vietnam or Jakarta, someplace now he can look at through the clouds. The tired hero. A couple of words to the girl beside him. He’s going home. So the war, to all purposes, is over. That’s enough reality for the West. It’s probably the history of the last two hundred years of Western political writing. Go home. Write a book. Hit the circuit.�
For the artist, the redemption is symbolic, as in the final pages of the novel Ananda is called to put back together a giant statue of Buddha that was blown to bits.
The face. It’s one hundred chips and splinters of stone brought together, merged, with the shadow of bamboo across its cheek. All its life until now the statue had never felt a human shadow. It had looked over these hot fields towards green terraces in the distant north. It had seen wars and offered peace or irony to those dying under it. Now sunlight hit the seams of its face, as if it were sewn roughly together. He wouldn’t hide that.
For the countless victims of the war, the new painted eyes on the restored Buddha offer a brief epitaph as they watch birds flying towards distant hills:
A small brave heart. In the heights she loved and in the dark she feared
February 6, 2022
Michael Ondaatje is one of those writers who doesn't write, but paints. His pen is a paintbrush, his paper is a canvas, and he uses words like colors to paint fragments of his characters' lives; pieces of the mosaic we call a novel. Just as his prose is broken into pieces, whose gaps hide more details than what’s written, his characters often get to be these torn, damaged individuals in search of something to complete them.
In "The English Patient," a novel published before "Anil's Ghost", four characters find themselves in the ruins of an Italian villa, and through a story about a tumultuous affair, they put together a puzzle of their identities finally reaching a solution. A dying man is what keeps them together. "Anil's Ghost" has a skeleton, a remains of an unknown person, that just like the mysterious Englishman in "The English Patient" binds three characters around itself. Each character with a tragic fate is described in a way no one but Ondaatje could have done. So Sailor, a name given to him by Anil and Sarath, becomes the center of the story.
Anil Tissera, a young woman with a male name bought from her brother by sexual favors because she didn't like the one given by her parents, returns to her home country of Sri Lanka after 15 years living in the West. She's no longer the swimmer everyone knew and everyone remembers her for. She now works for the UN as a forensic anthropologist tasked with finding evidence of atrocities permeated in the bloody civil war that has been raging across the country between the three sides, neither of which is innocent.
Sarath is her partner, an archaeologist assigned by the government to help her work. She suspects he's here to cover up any evidence of the killing of civilians, and her suspicions for his loyalty are legitimate as his cousin is a cabinet minister. Sarath’s distance and coldness just amplify that notion of a mole.
Gamini, Sarath's younger brother, is a doctor at a hospital in Colombo. Hooked on amphetamines to withstand the effort of his job, he spends all his time in the emergency room. His house after his wife left him is a home for another family because Gamini chose to be a waif that lives in the hospital, in love with a dead woman that never belonged to him for she was the wife of Sarath, a brother in whose shadow he always lived in and with whom he has no contact now.
Three characters, each dealing with life and death in their way, living solitary lives in their cocoons, hidden behind work. Their loneliness is their penance, this devotion to work is an attempt to forget the past, the spirits that haunt them.
Weaving the fates of these characters, along with a few others, using his poetic style, Ondaatje offers us a novel of palpable atmosphere and strong emotions; whether he writes about the game of two lovers, about failed marriages, or vicious murders. Through the search for the identity of Sailor and his killers, they reject the loneliness with which they defend themselves and come to peace, albeit for a short time, paying dearly.
However, it is not just a novel about three damaged characters and their tragic destinies, through the craftily use of the symbolism of Ondaatje's tells the story of war and its consequences, the story of countless victims abducted in broad daylight and killed simply because they belonged to the other side or that they happened to be where they shouldn’t be, about peace, much needed in every country that went through a civil war-like Sri Lanka as well as the identity, something he likes very fond of.
Although many people will not like it because of the fragmentation of its narrative, which is still more complete than the one in "The English Patient", and may therefore feel a disconnect with the characters, "Anil's Spirit" is certainly a novel worth read more times.
In "The English Patient," a novel published before "Anil's Ghost", four characters find themselves in the ruins of an Italian villa, and through a story about a tumultuous affair, they put together a puzzle of their identities finally reaching a solution. A dying man is what keeps them together. "Anil's Ghost" has a skeleton, a remains of an unknown person, that just like the mysterious Englishman in "The English Patient" binds three characters around itself. Each character with a tragic fate is described in a way no one but Ondaatje could have done. So Sailor, a name given to him by Anil and Sarath, becomes the center of the story.
Anil Tissera, a young woman with a male name bought from her brother by sexual favors because she didn't like the one given by her parents, returns to her home country of Sri Lanka after 15 years living in the West. She's no longer the swimmer everyone knew and everyone remembers her for. She now works for the UN as a forensic anthropologist tasked with finding evidence of atrocities permeated in the bloody civil war that has been raging across the country between the three sides, neither of which is innocent.
Sarath is her partner, an archaeologist assigned by the government to help her work. She suspects he's here to cover up any evidence of the killing of civilians, and her suspicions for his loyalty are legitimate as his cousin is a cabinet minister. Sarath’s distance and coldness just amplify that notion of a mole.
Gamini, Sarath's younger brother, is a doctor at a hospital in Colombo. Hooked on amphetamines to withstand the effort of his job, he spends all his time in the emergency room. His house after his wife left him is a home for another family because Gamini chose to be a waif that lives in the hospital, in love with a dead woman that never belonged to him for she was the wife of Sarath, a brother in whose shadow he always lived in and with whom he has no contact now.
Three characters, each dealing with life and death in their way, living solitary lives in their cocoons, hidden behind work. Their loneliness is their penance, this devotion to work is an attempt to forget the past, the spirits that haunt them.
Weaving the fates of these characters, along with a few others, using his poetic style, Ondaatje offers us a novel of palpable atmosphere and strong emotions; whether he writes about the game of two lovers, about failed marriages, or vicious murders. Through the search for the identity of Sailor and his killers, they reject the loneliness with which they defend themselves and come to peace, albeit for a short time, paying dearly.
However, it is not just a novel about three damaged characters and their tragic destinies, through the craftily use of the symbolism of Ondaatje's tells the story of war and its consequences, the story of countless victims abducted in broad daylight and killed simply because they belonged to the other side or that they happened to be where they shouldn’t be, about peace, much needed in every country that went through a civil war-like Sri Lanka as well as the identity, something he likes very fond of.
Although many people will not like it because of the fragmentation of its narrative, which is still more complete than the one in "The English Patient", and may therefore feel a disconnect with the characters, "Anil's Spirit" is certainly a novel worth read more times.
January 10, 2017
Beautiful, restrained... but at times, completely meandering!
I've already read The English Patient, so wasn't surprised when I dived into Ondaatje's world again, which feels very dreamy and evocative. It was a pleasure to read, but at times, a little frustrating... I sometimes had to go back and remind myself which character we were focusing on!
The story is centred round Anil, a champion swimmer turned forensic expert, who has returned to Sri Lanka to investigate a mysterious skeleton, buried in an ancient site. It ties in with the bigger picture of the war in Sri Lanka, which I found fascinating, as it's not something I knew anything about before.
Throughout the story, we don't just get to know Anil, but also the minor characters that enter her world, those damaged by the effects of the war around them. I loved this aspect of it, it added a lot of depth.
Ondaatjes language is spectacular at times, with gorgeously poetic phrases that make the book that much more beautiful. However, I'd personally say that plot is something of an issue, as it drifts, rather than drives you through. Just to emphasise though, if you're happy to sit back and simply let his stunning use of language wash over you, this isn't a problem!
Overall, a really enjoyable read, and I LIKE the fact the author has his own unique voice.
I've already read The English Patient, so wasn't surprised when I dived into Ondaatje's world again, which feels very dreamy and evocative. It was a pleasure to read, but at times, a little frustrating... I sometimes had to go back and remind myself which character we were focusing on!
The story is centred round Anil, a champion swimmer turned forensic expert, who has returned to Sri Lanka to investigate a mysterious skeleton, buried in an ancient site. It ties in with the bigger picture of the war in Sri Lanka, which I found fascinating, as it's not something I knew anything about before.
Throughout the story, we don't just get to know Anil, but also the minor characters that enter her world, those damaged by the effects of the war around them. I loved this aspect of it, it added a lot of depth.
Ondaatjes language is spectacular at times, with gorgeously poetic phrases that make the book that much more beautiful. However, I'd personally say that plot is something of an issue, as it drifts, rather than drives you through. Just to emphasise though, if you're happy to sit back and simply let his stunning use of language wash over you, this isn't a problem!
Overall, a really enjoyable read, and I LIKE the fact the author has his own unique voice.
August 26, 2024
Anil's Ghost
For several years, I have had the opportunity to study Theravada Buddhism at a Sri Lankan Buddhist Temple in Washington, D.C. Although it was not the focus of my interest, I had from the outset of my study of Buddhism been aware of the unfortunate civil war that raged in Sri Lanka for many years. I welcomed the opportunity to learn more about the conflict by reading Michael Ondaatje's novel "Anil's Ghost" (2000).
Ondaatje's novel is set in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s -- early 1990's in the midst of the conflict. As the author briefly describes it, the civil war involved the Tamils, a separatist group in the north of Sri Lanka, a group of insurgents in the south, and the Sri Lankan government. The civil war was fought in a brutal, clandestine manner, and it tended to be underreported in the West.
Ondaatje neither discusses the origins of the conflict nor attempts to ascribe blame. He does want to emphasize the terrible nature of the violence by all parties, including particularly the Sri Lankan government and its inconsistency with Buddhist teachings. Ondaatje's book also explores highly Buddhist themes of suffering, change, and self-understanding.
In Onadaatje's story, a 33-year old Foresnic Anthropologist, a medical doctor named Anil Tisera, arrives in Sri Lanka under the auspices of a human rights organization to explore the violence and its perpetrators. Anil was raised in Sri Lanka but left it at the age of 18 to pursue her studies and has little, if any, ties remaining to her native land. She is assisted in her efforts by 49 year old Sri Lankan archaeologist Sarath Diyasena, an employee of the government whose political affiliations remain murky during most of the book. Anil and Sarath discover a skeleton in an ancient burial ground, accessible only to the government. The skeleton, that the pair call "Sailor" appears to have been the victim of a recent political murder. Much of the book involves Anil's investigation of how Sailor met his fate.
Ondaatje tells his story slowly and suspensfully as Anil comes to see more of the violence which plagues the land -- including some graphic scenes of torture. In the process, Ondaatje tells the reader a substantial amount about Sri Lanka, its history, natural resources and people. A number of secondary characters are introduced, including an elderly scholar, Palipana, and a painter turned miner, Ananda. Sarath's younger brother Gamini who like Anil is a physician also comes to play a large role in the book.
Ondaatje intertwines his story of the civil war in Sri Lanka with flashbacks of the personal lives of his protagonists. Anil has abandoned the values of her native land and become, it appears, a westerner. The book describes her failed marriage and unhappy relationships in her new life. Sarath and Gamini also have had unhappiness in their marriages. The two brothers appear distant, personally and politically. The themes of suffering and loss in part tie in with the story. They seem to show the "ghosts" that everyone tends to carry with them. As a religion, I think Buddhism tries help people understand and free themselves from their ghosts. But the focus on the personal lives of the characters also detracts from the novel. It makes the story diffuse and unfocused and destroys the tension that Ondaatje otherwise tries to build up carefully in the story of "Sailor" and in the gradual unfolding of the violence, torture, and killing in Sri Lanka. The book thus pulls in too many directions and doesn't work entirely well as a consistent whole.
The book does show the anger, lust, and ignorance that Buddhism emphasizes as the source of sorrow in life. Ondaatje's novel also suggests the absence of easy answers on a personal or political level in resolving these conditions. Ondaatje appears to hold in high regard the Buddhism of the land of his own birth, but he doesn't appear to hold it out as the choice for his characters, especially the westernized Anil. The final scene of the book with Ananda working on restoring a damaged statue of the Buddha appears to capture for the author what Sri Lanka has helped give of value to people. In Theravada Buddhist Scriptures, Ananda is the Buddha's attendant who memorized and recited the Buddha's teachings that were later written down and became canonical.
A difficult and sometimes wandering book, "Anil's Ghost" does offer a chilling portrait of the Sri Lankan conflict and of the unhappy spaces in the human heart.
Robin Friedman
For several years, I have had the opportunity to study Theravada Buddhism at a Sri Lankan Buddhist Temple in Washington, D.C. Although it was not the focus of my interest, I had from the outset of my study of Buddhism been aware of the unfortunate civil war that raged in Sri Lanka for many years. I welcomed the opportunity to learn more about the conflict by reading Michael Ondaatje's novel "Anil's Ghost" (2000).
Ondaatje's novel is set in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s -- early 1990's in the midst of the conflict. As the author briefly describes it, the civil war involved the Tamils, a separatist group in the north of Sri Lanka, a group of insurgents in the south, and the Sri Lankan government. The civil war was fought in a brutal, clandestine manner, and it tended to be underreported in the West.
Ondaatje neither discusses the origins of the conflict nor attempts to ascribe blame. He does want to emphasize the terrible nature of the violence by all parties, including particularly the Sri Lankan government and its inconsistency with Buddhist teachings. Ondaatje's book also explores highly Buddhist themes of suffering, change, and self-understanding.
In Onadaatje's story, a 33-year old Foresnic Anthropologist, a medical doctor named Anil Tisera, arrives in Sri Lanka under the auspices of a human rights organization to explore the violence and its perpetrators. Anil was raised in Sri Lanka but left it at the age of 18 to pursue her studies and has little, if any, ties remaining to her native land. She is assisted in her efforts by 49 year old Sri Lankan archaeologist Sarath Diyasena, an employee of the government whose political affiliations remain murky during most of the book. Anil and Sarath discover a skeleton in an ancient burial ground, accessible only to the government. The skeleton, that the pair call "Sailor" appears to have been the victim of a recent political murder. Much of the book involves Anil's investigation of how Sailor met his fate.
Ondaatje tells his story slowly and suspensfully as Anil comes to see more of the violence which plagues the land -- including some graphic scenes of torture. In the process, Ondaatje tells the reader a substantial amount about Sri Lanka, its history, natural resources and people. A number of secondary characters are introduced, including an elderly scholar, Palipana, and a painter turned miner, Ananda. Sarath's younger brother Gamini who like Anil is a physician also comes to play a large role in the book.
Ondaatje intertwines his story of the civil war in Sri Lanka with flashbacks of the personal lives of his protagonists. Anil has abandoned the values of her native land and become, it appears, a westerner. The book describes her failed marriage and unhappy relationships in her new life. Sarath and Gamini also have had unhappiness in their marriages. The two brothers appear distant, personally and politically. The themes of suffering and loss in part tie in with the story. They seem to show the "ghosts" that everyone tends to carry with them. As a religion, I think Buddhism tries help people understand and free themselves from their ghosts. But the focus on the personal lives of the characters also detracts from the novel. It makes the story diffuse and unfocused and destroys the tension that Ondaatje otherwise tries to build up carefully in the story of "Sailor" and in the gradual unfolding of the violence, torture, and killing in Sri Lanka. The book thus pulls in too many directions and doesn't work entirely well as a consistent whole.
The book does show the anger, lust, and ignorance that Buddhism emphasizes as the source of sorrow in life. Ondaatje's novel also suggests the absence of easy answers on a personal or political level in resolving these conditions. Ondaatje appears to hold in high regard the Buddhism of the land of his own birth, but he doesn't appear to hold it out as the choice for his characters, especially the westernized Anil. The final scene of the book with Ananda working on restoring a damaged statue of the Buddha appears to capture for the author what Sri Lanka has helped give of value to people. In Theravada Buddhist Scriptures, Ananda is the Buddha's attendant who memorized and recited the Buddha's teachings that were later written down and became canonical.
A difficult and sometimes wandering book, "Anil's Ghost" does offer a chilling portrait of the Sri Lankan conflict and of the unhappy spaces in the human heart.
Robin Friedman
August 20, 2019
Only when I got to the end did things start falling into place. Most of the story seemed disjointed, and I was confused as to the purpose of some characters in this book.
November 7, 2020
"One village can speak for many villages. One victim can speak for many victims."
Anil Tissera, a forensic pathologist, returned to her native Sri Lanka after studying abroad. She is sponsored by a human rights group to investigate the mysterious deaths and disappearances during the civil war. The people were living in constant danger with atrocities committed by all three groups fighting in the 1980s war--the government, the separatists, and the insurgents.
Anil is paired with archaeologist Sarath Diyasena. They unearth four skeletons in a government-controlled area which they nickname Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, and Sailor. The first three skeletons are ancient, but Sailor is a recent victim who has been reburied. Sarath is immersed in history while his brother, a surgeon, deals with the victims of terrorism on a daily basis.
"Anil's Ghost" is partially a detective story as they work to identify Sailor. But this is literary fiction written in Michael Ondaatje's style with small glimpses or fragments of events, mixed with flashbacks, that all come together at the end. This is a story about identity, grief, and the futility of war. The characters are loners, devoted to their work, but often overwhelmed by tragedy. The beauty of the island of Sri Lanka, south of India, contrasts with the darkness of the story. Ondaatje, who is also a poet, wrote the book in beautiful prose. A glimmer of hope at the end kept the story from being relentlessly tragic.
Anil Tissera, a forensic pathologist, returned to her native Sri Lanka after studying abroad. She is sponsored by a human rights group to investigate the mysterious deaths and disappearances during the civil war. The people were living in constant danger with atrocities committed by all three groups fighting in the 1980s war--the government, the separatists, and the insurgents.
Anil is paired with archaeologist Sarath Diyasena. They unearth four skeletons in a government-controlled area which they nickname Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, and Sailor. The first three skeletons are ancient, but Sailor is a recent victim who has been reburied. Sarath is immersed in history while his brother, a surgeon, deals with the victims of terrorism on a daily basis.
"Anil's Ghost" is partially a detective story as they work to identify Sailor. But this is literary fiction written in Michael Ondaatje's style with small glimpses or fragments of events, mixed with flashbacks, that all come together at the end. This is a story about identity, grief, and the futility of war. The characters are loners, devoted to their work, but often overwhelmed by tragedy. The beauty of the island of Sri Lanka, south of India, contrasts with the darkness of the story. Ondaatje, who is also a poet, wrote the book in beautiful prose. A glimmer of hope at the end kept the story from being relentlessly tragic.
October 20, 2011
I really wanted to like this book. At dinner parties I always try to blend with the wallpaper when somebody starts raving about how the English Patient was the greatest film of all time. I always cringe when I have to admit I thought it was complete rubbish. I'm obviously a uncultured philistine.
This book was going to be my redemption, my step up into the intellectual elite. I wanted to be able to tell all my ever-so-clever friends that while The English Patient didn't rock my world, Anil's Ghost was a masterpiece. FAIL.
The central theme of identifying the body nicknamed Sailor was relegated to the background and became lost in pages of disjointed ramblings which generally added nothing to the story. Characters were introduced and examined but they didn't fit in the context of the story. Anil's friend Leaf is an example of this. The section dealing with the friendship between the two women was interesting but there wasn't any point to it.
In the end it was a relief to finish this book. The main story fizzled out but the closing pages were beautifully written and were the highlight of the book. I was left with the impression that the author spent so much time trying to write beautiful prose that he forgot to write a story.
This book was going to be my redemption, my step up into the intellectual elite. I wanted to be able to tell all my ever-so-clever friends that while The English Patient didn't rock my world, Anil's Ghost was a masterpiece. FAIL.
The central theme of identifying the body nicknamed Sailor was relegated to the background and became lost in pages of disjointed ramblings which generally added nothing to the story. Characters were introduced and examined but they didn't fit in the context of the story. Anil's friend Leaf is an example of this. The section dealing with the friendship between the two women was interesting but there wasn't any point to it.
In the end it was a relief to finish this book. The main story fizzled out but the closing pages were beautifully written and were the highlight of the book. I was left with the impression that the author spent so much time trying to write beautiful prose that he forgot to write a story.
August 16, 2021
ETA: Warning - you learn very few specifics about the civil war. I was up last night thinking about this and considering if I should remove a star. No, I am not removing one. Ondaatje has a special way of writing, and I like it very much. In the beginning of the book there is a statement that says the war continues but in another way! So I think, what way? Tell me! (He never does.) That irritated me then, just as so much else did in the beginning. I didn't get what I expected but what I got was very good. Still, a four star read.
What to say? I am thinking. I know I really liked it by the end.....not in the beginning. In the beginning and even in the middle I was often confused. In the beginning all that lured me was learning about the horrors of the civil war raging in Sri Lanka at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s and facts about the country - physical and cultural. By the end I knew who was who. People are not simple, and this writer does not make it easy for you. You jump all over the place, from one place, time and person to another. By the end I was enchanted by the lines. By the end I cared for several of the characters. By the end I understood the message and agreed. Is it best to drive for truth and clarity, if this will just bring more suffering? And yet some people are who they are and have to behave as they do.
The narration by Alan Cumming also annoyed me in the beginning, but by the end it was just fine. In the beginning there was a questioning tone, a tempo, an inflection that bugged me, but that just disappeared by the end!
What to say? I am thinking. I know I really liked it by the end.....not in the beginning. In the beginning and even in the middle I was often confused. In the beginning all that lured me was learning about the horrors of the civil war raging in Sri Lanka at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s and facts about the country - physical and cultural. By the end I knew who was who. People are not simple, and this writer does not make it easy for you. You jump all over the place, from one place, time and person to another. By the end I was enchanted by the lines. By the end I cared for several of the characters. By the end I understood the message and agreed. Is it best to drive for truth and clarity, if this will just bring more suffering? And yet some people are who they are and have to behave as they do.
The narration by Alan Cumming also annoyed me in the beginning, but by the end it was just fine. In the beginning there was a questioning tone, a tempo, an inflection that bugged me, but that just disappeared by the end!
May 31, 2017
I bought this book with the apprehension that I may never end up reading it. And ppl on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ had described it as dense with the language being difficult and all that. Also, my experience with the author's The English Patient wasn't a happy one. Anyway, to cut the long story short I somehow got around to it. It was a really rewarding experience. It is hard to tell the story. In that way, it is structured more like connecting short stories. It is about a forensic pathologist, a woman, who comes to Sri Lanka when the civil war was at its peak and about a couple of other guys who work with her. The writing was awesome. For me, it worked on so many levels. A Part of the story was like solving a murder mystery. Some portion about the personal lives of the three characters which was also very interesting and literary, a general commentary on the war-torn life of ppl, all with archeology as the backdrop - the technical details of which I found interesting. It didn't go abt giving a political commentary on who was right and who wasn't among the warring factions. Just the consequences and how the personal lives are affected by that. So you need not have a great understanding of the Sri Lankan civil war. It is cool to pick the book without knowing anything about it. Honestly, despite being a Tamil, I didn't know it was this bad. But this is not a totally grim book. This is the kind of book that I always want to read. Highly recommend it to Literary fiction readers. Finding any faults would be nit-picking.
Actual rating: 4.5 stars
Actual rating: 4.5 stars
March 29, 2022
was acclaimed as the capstone of 's work when it was published in 2000 after seven years in the making.
Set in the mid-1980s, it combines elements of a thriller/mystery with an exploration of what happens to people when they are living through a violent civil war and who have to deal with omnipresence of death in their lives. The leading male characters retreat into their own worlds - Gamini the doctor effectively living in the hospital where he works; Sarnath the archaeologist and another former archaeologist who has retreated to live on an ancient archaeological site.
In an interview, Ondaatje said that this was the book he had found most difficult to write, and the most painful, as it deal with the ravages of war in a country he's very closed to (he grew up in Sri Lanka, leaving when he was 11, and has revisited often).
Anil, the forensic archeologist for whom the book is named, was also born in Sri Lanka but comes back to it with no knowledge of it - a very dangerous situation given that she aims to track down victims of the current government. Her directness and determination are ok in the west, but not in a country that runs on different rules, and especially not when it's actively in a state of civil war.
Ondaatje shows something of what is it like to live in a country where there is an apparently never-ending war, and ordinary people are murdered by all parties to a conflict. In a country of fear, he asks, how do you cope with a situation like this? Not all are victims; some can become heroic.
Although Sri Lanka is its focus and his primary concern, the universality of situations like this were part of Ondaatje's reason for telling the story as he has. Not only does a country fracture, but so do people's lives.
Alongside the tragedy and horror, Ondaatje wanted to show that Sri Lanka is a remarkable country, with a great history and culture. Using archaeology as a theme and archaeologists as characters enabled him to do this. Buddhist spiritual beliefs and practices are also significant in the overall story.
Set in the mid-1980s, it combines elements of a thriller/mystery with an exploration of what happens to people when they are living through a violent civil war and who have to deal with omnipresence of death in their lives. The leading male characters retreat into their own worlds - Gamini the doctor effectively living in the hospital where he works; Sarnath the archaeologist and another former archaeologist who has retreated to live on an ancient archaeological site.
In an interview, Ondaatje said that this was the book he had found most difficult to write, and the most painful, as it deal with the ravages of war in a country he's very closed to (he grew up in Sri Lanka, leaving when he was 11, and has revisited often).
Anil, the forensic archeologist for whom the book is named, was also born in Sri Lanka but comes back to it with no knowledge of it - a very dangerous situation given that she aims to track down victims of the current government. Her directness and determination are ok in the west, but not in a country that runs on different rules, and especially not when it's actively in a state of civil war.
Ondaatje shows something of what is it like to live in a country where there is an apparently never-ending war, and ordinary people are murdered by all parties to a conflict. In a country of fear, he asks, how do you cope with a situation like this? Not all are victims; some can become heroic.
Although Sri Lanka is its focus and his primary concern, the universality of situations like this were part of Ondaatje's reason for telling the story as he has. Not only does a country fracture, but so do people's lives.
Alongside the tragedy and horror, Ondaatje wanted to show that Sri Lanka is a remarkable country, with a great history and culture. Using archaeology as a theme and archaeologists as characters enabled him to do this. Buddhist spiritual beliefs and practices are also significant in the overall story.
June 16, 2011
Anil's Ghost, the story of a forensic anthropologist investigating the bones of a war victim in Sri Lanka, is a painful, beautiful book. It is also very honest: the science does not magically resolve itself, but must be worked at; the war is hideous; the cultural knowledge is first-hand; and the heroics are small, if they exist at all, and usually brutally punished.
It is as frequently frustrating, unfortunately, as it is beautiful. Maybe it's just my simple, Hemingway-esque soul, but at times I just wanted him to tell me a story without another unrelated, and usually heartbreaking, tangent. Though - not to be contrary - it was one of those tangents that sticks with me most: the vignette of the title character and her best friend diagnosing the injuries of heroes in their favorite movies. Still, I left this book unsettled, sad, and feeling strangely lost. But then, I suppose, how else are you supposed to leave a book on civil war?
Hard to recommend, and yet, I'm glad to have read it. Ondataatje's writing is worth being frustrated for.
It is as frequently frustrating, unfortunately, as it is beautiful. Maybe it's just my simple, Hemingway-esque soul, but at times I just wanted him to tell me a story without another unrelated, and usually heartbreaking, tangent. Though - not to be contrary - it was one of those tangents that sticks with me most: the vignette of the title character and her best friend diagnosing the injuries of heroes in their favorite movies. Still, I left this book unsettled, sad, and feeling strangely lost. But then, I suppose, how else are you supposed to leave a book on civil war?
Hard to recommend, and yet, I'm glad to have read it. Ondataatje's writing is worth being frustrated for.
August 20, 2020
'anil's ghost' - a fictionalized story about the atrocities of the civil war that sri lanka went through, where ondaatje paints the brutality of sufferings using his picturesque words, a part of history that was lost even before it was ever found. i struggled with the writing, it was fragmented, characters too distant, the story - chaotic, dislocated. but isn't this what civil war does? this book was written in 2000 while sri lanka was still in the midst of the civil war, an attempt to seek refuge, a dying country's silent cry for help.
25 years of war, innumerable lives lost, their dreams buried deep in the ground - rotting, suffocating, wishing to be touched. ondaatje digs up the skeletons of unfulfilled desires and scattered sorrows, and silently places them into my palms, because some stories can never be read, but only felt. 3.5/5
25 years of war, innumerable lives lost, their dreams buried deep in the ground - rotting, suffocating, wishing to be touched. ondaatje digs up the skeletons of unfulfilled desires and scattered sorrows, and silently places them into my palms, because some stories can never be read, but only felt. 3.5/5
December 5, 2022
Anil is a forensic anthropologist who has returned to her native Sri Lanka as a representative of an international human rights organization. She works with archeologist Sarath as they attempt to identify a skeleton that they believe is a victim of atrocities committed by the government during the civil war. The storyline follows the pair’s journey toward identifying the victim, while flashing back to provide their personal histories. Sarath knows there is danger in pursuing identification, but Anil sees it as an opportunity to expose the truth to the world. They enlist help from Sarath’s brother, Gamini, a doctor who has treated civilians caught in the crossfire.
The writing is top rate. There are scenes of beauty as well as brutality. A number of storylines occur simultaneously, and they are seamlessly interwoven. We learn about archeology, forensic pathology, and medical practices used to treat victims of the civil war. We come to understand the different factions involved. Conflict is introduced in the interactions between Anil and Sarath. Anil does not entirely trust Sarath since he is a related to a government official. The tension builds in the second half, and the climactic scene is both unexpected and intense.
4.5
The writing is top rate. There are scenes of beauty as well as brutality. A number of storylines occur simultaneously, and they are seamlessly interwoven. We learn about archeology, forensic pathology, and medical practices used to treat victims of the civil war. We come to understand the different factions involved. Conflict is introduced in the interactions between Anil and Sarath. Anil does not entirely trust Sarath since he is a related to a government official. The tension builds in the second half, and the climactic scene is both unexpected and intense.
4.5
November 3, 2017
I will only add to the informative reviews of others that to me, sometimes to its advantage and sometimes to its detriment, this novel walks a razor's edge between fiction and sociology.
One strength of the novel, in addition to its many moments of beautiful writing, is the way it weaves archeology, forensic anthropology, and cultural anthropology into a narrative of complementary epistemologies while at the same time unfurling a mystery through the trajectories of its diverse cast of characters. Each form of knowledge is embodied by a well-developed character and each character in the novel also personifies limitations and biases of their discipline while at the same time all are necessary to complete the picture for the reader. These forms of knowledge also serve as a filter, a heuristic, and a coping mechanism for the characters and the reader through which to explain the inexplicable: the atrocities of the Sri Lankan civil war. As a contribution to the form of the novel, this is brilliantly done and puts the novel in the tradition of Wilkie Collins' Moonstone, a Victorian novel that first used multiple narrators to build a detective story. Despite the mystery of Soldier's identity that drives the story (and that mirrors Anil's own and not-always-conscious quest for self-identity), Anil's Ghost is never quite a detective story or a multi-narrator novel, however, as the center of narrative gravity never completely leaves Anil's perspective.
The novel's greatest weakness to me as fiction was also something I found valuable as a travel guide and for it's appeal to my intellectual curiosity: many extensive discursions (yes, that's a word!) that seek to explain details about the culture or disciplines, for example about forensics. Ondaatje clearly had a field day (no archeology pun intended ;) ) with all the textbooks and sources he cites in a meaty appendix of source texts and materials.
I had just returned from Sri Lanka when I finished this and found reading the second half after my journey much more engaging the first half prior to traveling. There is a classicism to the prose and dialogue that may provide another coping filter to the underlying atrocity but I found the lack of a single contraction in anyone's dialogue, for example, off-putting, drawing my attention to the writer's distance and intellectual craftsmanship when I sought greater absorption in the narrative, characters, and exquisite descriptions of setting. Having met so many wonderful Sri Lankans on my trip, only one person I met spoke in extended discursive paragraphs as many of the characters do here (and that person's paragraphs were not nearly as composed and writerly as these).
Improbable recollections of exhaustively catalogued details from the protagonist's forensic textbooks and lapses into exposition for exposition's sake (i.e., to inform the reader) and many moments of unrealistic writerly dialogue only barely mar an otherwise engrossing narrative. While I found them intrusive, the many discursions provide good fodder for travelers and others seeking to know more about Sri Lankan history and the play of disciplines contributes to this novel's intricate and formally apt approach to truth-telling through novel form. (4, maybe 3.5)
One strength of the novel, in addition to its many moments of beautiful writing, is the way it weaves archeology, forensic anthropology, and cultural anthropology into a narrative of complementary epistemologies while at the same time unfurling a mystery through the trajectories of its diverse cast of characters. Each form of knowledge is embodied by a well-developed character and each character in the novel also personifies limitations and biases of their discipline while at the same time all are necessary to complete the picture for the reader. These forms of knowledge also serve as a filter, a heuristic, and a coping mechanism for the characters and the reader through which to explain the inexplicable: the atrocities of the Sri Lankan civil war. As a contribution to the form of the novel, this is brilliantly done and puts the novel in the tradition of Wilkie Collins' Moonstone, a Victorian novel that first used multiple narrators to build a detective story. Despite the mystery of Soldier's identity that drives the story (and that mirrors Anil's own and not-always-conscious quest for self-identity), Anil's Ghost is never quite a detective story or a multi-narrator novel, however, as the center of narrative gravity never completely leaves Anil's perspective.
The novel's greatest weakness to me as fiction was also something I found valuable as a travel guide and for it's appeal to my intellectual curiosity: many extensive discursions (yes, that's a word!) that seek to explain details about the culture or disciplines, for example about forensics. Ondaatje clearly had a field day (no archeology pun intended ;) ) with all the textbooks and sources he cites in a meaty appendix of source texts and materials.
I had just returned from Sri Lanka when I finished this and found reading the second half after my journey much more engaging the first half prior to traveling. There is a classicism to the prose and dialogue that may provide another coping filter to the underlying atrocity but I found the lack of a single contraction in anyone's dialogue, for example, off-putting, drawing my attention to the writer's distance and intellectual craftsmanship when I sought greater absorption in the narrative, characters, and exquisite descriptions of setting. Having met so many wonderful Sri Lankans on my trip, only one person I met spoke in extended discursive paragraphs as many of the characters do here (and that person's paragraphs were not nearly as composed and writerly as these).
Improbable recollections of exhaustively catalogued details from the protagonist's forensic textbooks and lapses into exposition for exposition's sake (i.e., to inform the reader) and many moments of unrealistic writerly dialogue only barely mar an otherwise engrossing narrative. While I found them intrusive, the many discursions provide good fodder for travelers and others seeking to know more about Sri Lankan history and the play of disciplines contributes to this novel's intricate and formally apt approach to truth-telling through novel form. (4, maybe 3.5)
October 30, 2008
Anil Tessira, a 33-year-old native Sri Lankan who left her country 15 years before, is a forensic pathologist sent by the U.N. human rights commission to investigate reports of mass murders on the island. Atrocities are being committed by three groups: the government, anti-government insurgents, and separatist guerrillas. Working secretly, these warring forces are decimating a population paralyzed by pervasive fear. Taciturn archeologist Sarath Diyasena is assigned by the government to be Anil's partner; at 49, he is emotionally withdrawn from the chaotic contemporary world, reserving his passion for the prehistoric shards of his profession. Together, Anil and Sarath discover that a skeleton interred among ancient bones in a government-protected sanctuary is that of a recently killed young man. Anil defiantly sets out to document this murder by identifying the victim and then making an official report. Throughout their combined forensic and archeological investigation, detailed by Ondaatje with the meticulous accuracy readers will remember from descriptions of the bomb sapper's procedures in The English Patient, Sarath remains a mysterious figure to Anil. Her confusion about his motives is reinforced when she meets his brother, Gamini, an emergency room doctor who is as intimately involved in his country's turmoil as Sarath refuses to be. The lives of these characters, and of others in their orbits, emerge circuitously, layer by layer. In the end, Anil's moral indignation--and her innocence--place her in exquisite danger, and Sarath is moved to a life-defining sacrifice.
This was a strange book in a way but very moving and haunting, Anil has come back to Sri Lanka to reconnect with her past but doesn't seem to know how to do it.
This was a strange book in a way but very moving and haunting, Anil has come back to Sri Lanka to reconnect with her past but doesn't seem to know how to do it.
August 16, 2021
As usual, I enjoyed Ondaatje's lyrical style. Using a forensic anthopologust to try and uncover not only the dead "Sailor" but also Sri Lanka's complicated ethnic mess was a master stroke.
The violence and madness came in flashes between the beautiful poetic prose.
The violence and madness came in flashes between the beautiful poetic prose.
April 20, 2023
Es dauert eine Weile, bis man sich an die eher kargen Charaktere und die Zeitsprünge gewöhnt hat aber dann führt einen Anils Geist auf hervorragende Weise in die traurige und von alltäglicher Gewalt strotzende Welt des - weder literarisch, noch in der Sri-Lankanischen Gesellschaft wirklich aufgearbeiteten - Bürgerkriegs in Sri Lanka ein.
Für mich waren zwei Dinge besonders eindrucksvoll: Die Beschreibung der antiken Stätten, die ich als Tourist kennengelernt habe, im Lichte des Bürgerkriegs als Ort der Inspiration für Terroranschläge, als Versteck für Leichen und Leitmotiv für einen mörderischen buddhistischen Nationalismus, sowie die Schilderung der Ärzte, die im Blut waten und so eine Identität gewinnen oder alles verlieren.
Für mich waren zwei Dinge besonders eindrucksvoll: Die Beschreibung der antiken Stätten, die ich als Tourist kennengelernt habe, im Lichte des Bürgerkriegs als Ort der Inspiration für Terroranschläge, als Versteck für Leichen und Leitmotiv für einen mörderischen buddhistischen Nationalismus, sowie die Schilderung der Ärzte, die im Blut waten und so eine Identität gewinnen oder alles verlieren.
May 18, 2022
This is my first Michael Ondaatje book. Believe it or not, I have not read The English Patient.
Ondaatje is known for his lyrical prose. This book certainly meets that criterion. Unfortunately, it was hard to follow the plot.
I do know this. The heroine Anil Tissera is from Sri Lanka. She has been gone for fifteen years. She studied to become a forensic archeologist. She has been called back to research skeletons thought to be murdered by the government during the Civil War.
I read this book due to the recent Sri Lankan tragedy (250 people killed on Easter Sunday in churches and hotels). I would be very interested in a book that describes and is based on this tragedy (if it is ever written).
3 stars
Ondaatje is known for his lyrical prose. This book certainly meets that criterion. Unfortunately, it was hard to follow the plot.
I do know this. The heroine Anil Tissera is from Sri Lanka. She has been gone for fifteen years. She studied to become a forensic archeologist. She has been called back to research skeletons thought to be murdered by the government during the Civil War.
I read this book due to the recent Sri Lankan tragedy (250 people killed on Easter Sunday in churches and hotels). I would be very interested in a book that describes and is based on this tragedy (if it is ever written).
3 stars
December 18, 2013
Writing a classic war novel is never easy, of course, but consider the audience that awaited Stephen Crane's "Red Badge of Courage" in 1895. Every reader in America was still living in the shadow of the Civil War.
Similarly, when Erich Maria Remarque released "All Quiet on the Western Front" in 1929, there was a whole planet waiting to make sense of World War I.
Unfortunately, the West is not waiting for a novel about the civil war in Sri Lanka. But Michael Ondaatje is about to put this tragedy on the map of Western consciousness with "Anil's Ghost."
His last book, "The English Patient," won England's Booker Prize in 1992, and the interminable movie version won an Academy Award for best picture in 1997. On the strength of that success, millions of readers will pick up "Anil's Ghost" no matter what it's about.
They won't be disappointed.
The situation in Sri Lanka is a novelist's jungle. The conflict has been raging for 16 years, has claimed 60,000 lives, and has already decimated large parts of the island nation off the coast of India. Clashing politicians, rebel groups, and religious traditions could easily tangle this book in a thicket of details that only those well-versed in Sri Lankan politics could follow. But Ondaatje has not set out to record his homeland's modern history.
Instead, "Anil's Ghost" focuses on the emotional complexities of living in a country beset by political terror. The effect is at once gorgeous and ghastly.
Through the center of the book runs the gripping story of Anil Tissera, a forensic anthropologist who returns to Sri Lanka under the auspices of an international human rights group. When she left 15 years before, she was a bashful hero, lionized for her remarkable strength as a swimmer. On her return, she needs all that strength and more to traverse the waves of fear that have been crashing over her homeland.
As the invited guest of a regime widely suspected of carrying out mass murders and torture, Anil works in a precarious situation. Her government-appointed partner, a local archaeologist named Sarath Diyasena, gives her little reason to relax. The two of them retreat with the first selection of bodies to a makeshift laboratory in the dark cargo hold of an abandoned luxury liner. You'll have to remind yourself to keep breathing as you read this book.
There are any number of fresh subjects being unearthed daily, but they choose to concentrate on a skeleton that appears to have been reburied in a government-controlled area.
It's gruesome work - quixotic and suicidal - but both Anil and Sarath are determined to pursue the truth of this single, representative atrocity. Ondaatje's voice, alternately calm and impressionistic, is perfect for conveying such horrors in a relentless series of short chapters: "On this island, she realized she was moving with only one arm of language among uncertain laws and a fear that was everywhere. There was less to hold on to with that one arm. Truth bounced between gossip and vengeance. Rumour slipped into every car and barbershop."
Breaking through the culture of fear-enforced silence proves as difficult as determining a victim's identify from his burned remains. They seek assistance from an old man drunk on grief and alcohol who is one of the few artists entrusted to paint the eyes on statues of Buddha. This mystical act of bringing a god's eyes to life becomes a haunting symbol in a novel about hidden crimes.
Laced through this central detective story are anecdotes from the characters' pasts, scenes from elsewhere on the island, and random acts of violence. All these characters are quiet, desperate people, addicted to their work or their grief. Ondaatje is a master at portraying unconsummated desire - for love, truth, or peace.
Similarly, when Erich Maria Remarque released "All Quiet on the Western Front" in 1929, there was a whole planet waiting to make sense of World War I.
Unfortunately, the West is not waiting for a novel about the civil war in Sri Lanka. But Michael Ondaatje is about to put this tragedy on the map of Western consciousness with "Anil's Ghost."
His last book, "The English Patient," won England's Booker Prize in 1992, and the interminable movie version won an Academy Award for best picture in 1997. On the strength of that success, millions of readers will pick up "Anil's Ghost" no matter what it's about.
They won't be disappointed.
The situation in Sri Lanka is a novelist's jungle. The conflict has been raging for 16 years, has claimed 60,000 lives, and has already decimated large parts of the island nation off the coast of India. Clashing politicians, rebel groups, and religious traditions could easily tangle this book in a thicket of details that only those well-versed in Sri Lankan politics could follow. But Ondaatje has not set out to record his homeland's modern history.
Instead, "Anil's Ghost" focuses on the emotional complexities of living in a country beset by political terror. The effect is at once gorgeous and ghastly.
Through the center of the book runs the gripping story of Anil Tissera, a forensic anthropologist who returns to Sri Lanka under the auspices of an international human rights group. When she left 15 years before, she was a bashful hero, lionized for her remarkable strength as a swimmer. On her return, she needs all that strength and more to traverse the waves of fear that have been crashing over her homeland.
As the invited guest of a regime widely suspected of carrying out mass murders and torture, Anil works in a precarious situation. Her government-appointed partner, a local archaeologist named Sarath Diyasena, gives her little reason to relax. The two of them retreat with the first selection of bodies to a makeshift laboratory in the dark cargo hold of an abandoned luxury liner. You'll have to remind yourself to keep breathing as you read this book.
There are any number of fresh subjects being unearthed daily, but they choose to concentrate on a skeleton that appears to have been reburied in a government-controlled area.
It's gruesome work - quixotic and suicidal - but both Anil and Sarath are determined to pursue the truth of this single, representative atrocity. Ondaatje's voice, alternately calm and impressionistic, is perfect for conveying such horrors in a relentless series of short chapters: "On this island, she realized she was moving with only one arm of language among uncertain laws and a fear that was everywhere. There was less to hold on to with that one arm. Truth bounced between gossip and vengeance. Rumour slipped into every car and barbershop."
Breaking through the culture of fear-enforced silence proves as difficult as determining a victim's identify from his burned remains. They seek assistance from an old man drunk on grief and alcohol who is one of the few artists entrusted to paint the eyes on statues of Buddha. This mystical act of bringing a god's eyes to life becomes a haunting symbol in a novel about hidden crimes.
Laced through this central detective story are anecdotes from the characters' pasts, scenes from elsewhere on the island, and random acts of violence. All these characters are quiet, desperate people, addicted to their work or their grief. Ondaatje is a master at portraying unconsummated desire - for love, truth, or peace.
February 9, 2021
This is a book which I definitely need to read a second time because as I went on, I realized there were things I didn’t catch the first time around. Michael Ondaajte is best known for “The English Patient� but the background of the story is the civil war in the author’s native Sri Lanka in the 80’s and 90’s and he does an excellent job of creating the paranoia of not knowing who to trust; there are three separate factions involved and any one of these can make you “disappear� for no reason at all. Who can you trust? No one. The protagonist, Anil, left Sri Lanka as a teen but now returns for the first time, for a human rights group in her capacity as a forensic anthropologist, determined to get to the truth and bring to accounts those responsible for the massacres. She’s teamed with an anthropologist who’s employed by the government but whose motives, loyalties and past life are unclear. Alternately, he is responsible for helping and reining in Anil but there are other characters who are similarly conflicted by past events and their part in current affairs, just as Anil is haunted by two previous relationships, and as these stories leak out, the story begins to take some shape. However, much of this takes the form of detours from the main story, or what seems to be the main story, the investigation of the remains of a body found in a government-controlled archaeological site but was obviously only five years or so old. Or is the main story the struggle to deal with the present among ghosts of the past? There are allusions in the book to events which happened in previous parts and may have slipped by unnoticed, subtexts to conversations, and unless you are prepared to go back and forth and reread all this passages, it can be confusing. It reminded me a bit of the Mel Gibson-Sigourney Weaver film, “The Year of Living Dangerously�, where you need to rewind a bit or just experience the whole thing again, somewhat wiser from the first time. Moreover, Michael Ondaatje’s talent as a poet shines through the text, another reason for a reread, and the story can be hypnotizing, which is one reason more for me to enjoy it again.
May 9, 2011
There are pietas of every kind.
And there are many bodies to be held in this Sri Lankan tone poem. The holders, to say the least, are complicated. As are the geopolitics. No happy endings. And no answers.
I sat in a parking spot in Clarion, PA, on a warming May day, and read the last 100 pages in lieu of lunch. This was moving, and incomplete, and poetic, and while I knew this was more a prose poem than a novel, I loved the voice that could say,
There are pietas of every kind.
Hold me.
Postlude: I learned how to torture a passed-out drunk. Put a pair of headphones on him or her and crank up Tom Waits singing 'Dig, Dig, Dig' from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
And there are many bodies to be held in this Sri Lankan tone poem. The holders, to say the least, are complicated. As are the geopolitics. No happy endings. And no answers.
I sat in a parking spot in Clarion, PA, on a warming May day, and read the last 100 pages in lieu of lunch. This was moving, and incomplete, and poetic, and while I knew this was more a prose poem than a novel, I loved the voice that could say,
There are pietas of every kind.
Hold me.
Postlude: I learned how to torture a passed-out drunk. Put a pair of headphones on him or her and crank up Tom Waits singing 'Dig, Dig, Dig' from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
January 12, 2025
As the reader, I felt as though the author was flipping me around a pinball machine - forensics, archaeology, religion, civil war, medicine, history, culture, geology, painful childhoods, painful relationships, politics, murder - it’s exhausting.
The premise is that Anil, a forensic anthropologist, is appointed by The Centre for Human Rights in Geneva to go to Sri Lanka to investigate claims of atrocities made by Amnesty International and others. Under pressure from their Western trading partners, the Sri Lankan government has agreed to the appointment and pairs her with Sarath, a local archaeologist. Both are Sri Lankans by birth but Anil left to study and hasn’t been back in the intervening 12 years or so. It is now 1992 or thereabouts.
The central theme is the discovery of a more recent body in an archaeological site containing much older burials. The skeleton is brought back to Colombo for analysis, although Anil and Sarath end up travelling elsewhere with it to work on it and to try to identify the person. It’s interesting to learn many of the techniques that are used to do this but proving, if they could, that this man was murdered was going to achieve very little. The dead man was simply the tip of a bottomless iceberg. There were plenty of witnesses to the extent of the atrocities but little likelihood that the perpetrators would ever be brought to justice. Their efforts seem quite pointless, therefore.
Moving around the country allows Ondaatje to educate us about Sri Lankan history and culture. I found that interesting, especially as I had bought this book to read prior to visiting the country (a holiday that was cancelled due to political unrest elsewhere). Civilians were the subjects of countless atrocities and they lived in constant fear -
I learned a great deal about the country on several levels and I appreciate that. I found the book disjointed however, with too much veering off into the personal backgrounds of those involved, information that did not seem altogether relevant to me. The character of Sarath’s brother, Gamini, is simply to allow Ondaatje to describe the awful conditions under which medical staff worked. His story takes up a significant part of the book but much of it is about his personal life which serves little purpose. The sometimes sordid details of Anil’s past relationships and friendships are also mostly irrelevant and it is clear that Ondaatje has a bit of an obsession with women getting their long hair wet as I lost count of the number of times she showered and then wrung her hair dry!
For me, this could have been a much better book if the author had been more focussed. There is so much of interest and so much to learn. In the end, although feeling enriched through learning more about the country and sadly overwhelmed by the extent of the atrocities, I was underwhelmed by the book.
The premise is that Anil, a forensic anthropologist, is appointed by The Centre for Human Rights in Geneva to go to Sri Lanka to investigate claims of atrocities made by Amnesty International and others. Under pressure from their Western trading partners, the Sri Lankan government has agreed to the appointment and pairs her with Sarath, a local archaeologist. Both are Sri Lankans by birth but Anil left to study and hasn’t been back in the intervening 12 years or so. It is now 1992 or thereabouts.
The central theme is the discovery of a more recent body in an archaeological site containing much older burials. The skeleton is brought back to Colombo for analysis, although Anil and Sarath end up travelling elsewhere with it to work on it and to try to identify the person. It’s interesting to learn many of the techniques that are used to do this but proving, if they could, that this man was murdered was going to achieve very little. The dead man was simply the tip of a bottomless iceberg. There were plenty of witnesses to the extent of the atrocities but little likelihood that the perpetrators would ever be brought to justice. Their efforts seem quite pointless, therefore.
Moving around the country allows Ondaatje to educate us about Sri Lankan history and culture. I found that interesting, especially as I had bought this book to read prior to visiting the country (a holiday that was cancelled due to political unrest elsewhere). Civilians were the subjects of countless atrocities and they lived in constant fear -
In a fearful nation, public sorrow was stamped down by the climate of uncertainty. If a father protested a son’s death, it was feared another family member would be killed. If people you knew disappeared, there was a chance they might stay alive if you did not cause trouble. This was the scarring psychosis in the country. Death, loss, was unfinished so you could not walk it through. There had been years if night visitations, murders or kidnappings in broad daylight. The only chance was that the creatures that fought would consume themselves.
I learned a great deal about the country on several levels and I appreciate that. I found the book disjointed however, with too much veering off into the personal backgrounds of those involved, information that did not seem altogether relevant to me. The character of Sarath’s brother, Gamini, is simply to allow Ondaatje to describe the awful conditions under which medical staff worked. His story takes up a significant part of the book but much of it is about his personal life which serves little purpose. The sometimes sordid details of Anil’s past relationships and friendships are also mostly irrelevant and it is clear that Ondaatje has a bit of an obsession with women getting their long hair wet as I lost count of the number of times she showered and then wrung her hair dry!
For me, this could have been a much better book if the author had been more focussed. There is so much of interest and so much to learn. In the end, although feeling enriched through learning more about the country and sadly overwhelmed by the extent of the atrocities, I was underwhelmed by the book.
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