Anil's Ghost

In a fearful nation, public sorrow was stamped down by the climate of uncertainty. If a father protested a son’s death, it was feared another family member would be killed. If people you knew disappeared, there was a chance they might stay alive if you did not cause trouble. This was a scarring p......more

My least favourite Ondaatje book. It all felt a bit flat to me. So much so that I'm struggling to think of anything interesting to say about it. Perhaps the main problem is the central character Anil who never came alive for me. She's something of a cliché, the career woman floundering in an affair......more

It’s the civil war in Sri Lanka. Anil, the novel’s heroine, is a forensic anthropologist and part of a team investigating possible war crimes. She is paired for the investigation with a government-selected archaeologist named Sarath, an enigmatic man 16 years her senior. Together Anil and Sarath fin......more

Michael Ondaatje is one of those writers who doesn't write, but paints. His pen is a paintbrush, his paper is a canvas, and he uses words like colors to paint fragments of his characters' lives; pieces of the mosaic we call a novel. Just as his prose is broken into pieces, whose gaps hide more detai......more