Anil's Ghost

by Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje explores the aftermath of the civil war in Sri Lanka, his homeland, in this story of an anthropologist living in America. She returns to Sri Lanka to investigate a suspected mass murder, and becomes part of a team that unearths the bodies of the "disappeared." A large cast of characters shares the narrative, including a doctor kidnapped by rebel insurgents, a blind recluse, and an enigmatic archaeologist. This novel won the 2000 Canadian Governor General's Award for Fiction, and was a New York Times Notable Book for the year 2000.

Editions of Anil's Ghost

ISBN 9780375410536	Binding/Format Hardcover	Publisher Random House Inc	Date 2000	Price $1.00	Used - Very Good
ISBN 9780375725913	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher Alfred a Knopf Inc	Date 2001	Price $3.51	Very Good
ISBN 9780754023777	Binding/Format Book	Publisher Thorndike Press	Date 2000	Price None Available
ISBN 9780375724374	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher Vintage Books	Date 2001	Price $1.00	Like New
ISBN 9780786227907	Binding/Format Hardcover	Publisher Thorndike Pr	Date 2000	Price $2.75	Good
ISBN 9780973398427	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher Bookclub-In-A-Box	Date 2005	Price None Available
ISBN 9780786227914	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher Thorndike Pr	Date 2001	Price None Available

Publisher Notes

A forensic pathologist returns to Sri Lanka--after fifteen years abroad--to assist in identifying victims of the country's civil war.

Media Reviews

"The aftershocks of the recent bloody civil war in Sri Lanka...are explored with commanding poetic intensity....The reader becomes lost in thickets of speculation and reverie. Impressive and often fascinating, but not a success. There's ample evidence that Ondaatje worked diligently, and perhaps for several years, on ANIL'S GHOST. But he doesn't seem to have finished it."

Excerpt

And who was this skeleton? In this room, among these four, she was hiding among the unhistorical dead. To fetch a dead body: what a curious task! To cut down the corpse of an unknown hanged man and then bear the body of the animal on one's back...something dead, something buried, something already rotting away? Who was he? This representative of all those lost voices. To give him a name would name the rest.

First Line

When the team reached the site at five-thirty in the morning, one or two family members would be waiting for them. And they would be present all day while Anil and the others worked, never leaving; they spelled each other so someone always stayed, as if to ensure that the evidence would not be lost again. This vigil for the dead, for these half-revealed forms.

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