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Summary and Reviews of Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje

Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje

Anil's Ghost

by Michael Ondaatje
  • Critics' Consensus (5):
  • Readers' Rating (17):
  • First Published:
  • May 1, 2000, 320 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Apr 2001, 320 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

Unfolding against the deeply evocative background of Sri Lanka's landscape and ancient civilization, Anil's Ghost is a literary spellbinder.

With his first novel since the internationally acclaimed The English Patient, 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.

The time is our own time. 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.

Unfolding against the deeply evocative background of Sri Lanka's landscape and ancient civilization, Anil's Ghost is a literary spellbinder--the most powerful novel we have yet had from Michael Ondaatje.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

Salon - Gary Kamiya
Anil's Ghost ... is the most restrained and plot-driven of his books. This description is relative, of course Even a subdued Ondaatje is more of a shape shifter and trickster than 99 percent of his peers. The polyphonic elements -- the use of multiple stories of equal or almost equal weight -- that are an Ondaatje trademark are still here, as are the majestic set passages, but for the first time in his career a single story forms the skeleton of the book.

Time Out New York - Anderson Tepper
As in The English Patient, Ondaatje seamlessly melds historical esoterica with flashing insights into the emotional worlds of his characters, setting all this against a backdrop of trauma and triage, both personal and social.

USA Today - Robert Allen Papinchak
Anil's Ghost is virtually flawless, with impeccable regional details, startlingly original characters and a compelling literary plot that borders on the thriller.

Wall Street Journal - Elizabeth Bukowski
Anil's Ghost has a collage-like structure that hops among scenes from the past and present of different characters' lives. The fragmented narrative heightens the sense that these characters only halfway inhabit their lives

Publishers Weekly
[O]ndaatje's novel satisfies one of the most exalted purposes of fiction to illuminate the human condition through pity and terror. It may well be the capstone of his career.

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Read-Alikes

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