Anil's Ghost

In his most atmospheric and suspenseful novel, Anil’s Ghost, Michael Ondaatje transports readers into the middle of the civil war that splintered Sri Lanka. A brilliant forensic anthropologist who was educated abroad, Anil Tissera bravely returns to her homeland determined to unearth evidence to explain the brutal campaign of murders ravaging the country. With each new discovery Anil makes, at great risk to her own safety, I find myself holding my breath. Although the powerful elite are lined up against her, she stands firm, refusing to let the guns and bombs scare her away. Steeped in centuries of culture… show more.

Ondaatje’s writing is always astonishing. His stories are beautifully crafted from the hard edges of history, changing my perception of the possibilities of historical fiction. In Anil’s Ghost, Ondaatje explores Sri Lanka’s centuries of tradition through the lens of brutal modern civil war and the organized murder campaigns that brought terror to the island. Anil is a foreign-trained forensic pathologist employed by the United Nations as part of a human rights investigation to help identify the nameless victims of the war. Her own name was bought from her older brother—an unused second name passed down from a long-dead grandfather.… show more.