Anil's Ghost

Knopf, NY, 2000. SIGNED. New-Unread. 1st/1st. First US edition, Stated First Edition with no other printings. Signed by Ondaatje, author of The English Patient, on the title page. Unread copy in Mint condition. Tight and straight with sharp tips and clean unmarked boards. Textblock is clean with no writing, bookplate or marks and not BCE, ex-library or remaindered. Dust jacket is unclipped ($25.00) and pristine. Only opened by the author at the signing event at Booksmith in San Francisco and for photos. Protected in a Brodart cover. Winner of the Giller Prize, Governor General's Award, Kiriyama Prize, Prix Medicis, and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize.

The place is Sri Lanka, the island nation formerly known as Ceylon, off the southern tip of India, a country steeped in centuries of cultural achievement and tradition--and forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of civil war and the consequences of a country divided against itself. Into this maelstrom steps a young woman, Anil Tissera, born in Sri Lanka, educated in England and America, a forensic anthropologist sent by an international human rights group to work with local officials to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island. Bodies are discovered. Skeletons. And particularly one, nicknamed 'Sailor.' What follows is a story about love, about family, about identity, about the unknown enemy, about the quest to unlock the hidden past--all propelled by a riveting mystery.