Anil's Ghost

Description

From the author of The English Patient and Running in the Family, a breathtaking novel about love and the horrors of civil war. 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 a bloody civil war. Enter Anil Tissera, a young woman and forensic anthropologist born in Sri Lanka but educted in the West, sent by an international human rights group to identify the victims of the murder campaigns sweeping the island. When Anil discovers that the bones found in an ancient burial site are in fact those of a much more recent victim, her search for the terrible truth hidden in her homeland begins. What follows is a story about love, about family, about identity - a story driven by a riventing mystery.

Michael Ondaatje is the author of several novels, as well as a memoir, a nonfiction book on film, and several books of poetry. Among his many Canadian and international recognitions, his novel The English Patient won the Booker Prize, and was adapted into a multi-award winning Oscar movie; and Anil's Ghost won the Giller Prize, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and the Prix Medicis. Born in Sri Lanka, Michael Ondaatje lives in Toronto.

"There is much to astonish, to disturb and to admire in this dense book... a rare triumph" Guardian "This is why I read, this is why literature matters, this, in short, is IT!... By the closing pages Anil's Ghost has come as close to a holy book as a novel ever should" Independent "A deeply felt and highly accomplished survey of devastated paradise... which both plunges you into the carnage of Sri Lanka's civil war and keeps you aware of the island's past splendours of civilisation. Barbarity and art hauntingly mingle in this fine book" Sunday Times "It is Ondaatje's extraordinary achievement to use magic in order to make the blood of his own country real... Nowhere has he written more beautifully" New York Times Book Review "A truly wondrous book... I was as enthralled as I have not been since The English Patient" -- Ariel Dorfman, author of Death and the Maiden