Anil's Ghost

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

Anil was born in Sri Lanka but left in her teens to study medicine in
the West. After her family perishes in a car accident, Anil turns her
back on her homeland and pursues a career in forensic anthropology in
Europe and North America. Fifteen years later, she returns to Sri Lanka
as a member of the international human rights team investigating alleged
political murders committed by the government. She finds her homeland
wracked by a savage multifactioned civil war. Kidnapping, torture,
mutilation, and murder are part of everyday living. Anil does not know
how much she can trust her assigned partner, Sarath, a superficially
easygoing man who tells lies and has known connections to the oppressive
Sri Lankan government. Anil and Sarath discover a skeleton in a
government-controlled archeological site. Through their combined
expertise, they determine the skeleton was a murder victim but until
they uncover his identity, they will be unable to prove their case.

As he did in Skin of a Lion and The English Patient, Ondaatje has
painstakingly built a landscape out of thoroughly researched technical
details and then populated it with incredibly complex characters.
Ondaatje walks the reader over steaming jungle paths, along crowded
streets, and through gruesome autopsy labs. Seemingly obscure and
isolated events slowly tie together to form a larger interconnected
drama. Individuals weave in and out of the storyline. As always,
Ondaatje’s intricate prose flows like a mountain stream, changing pace
and direction without warning but always working toward a final,
unforeseeable destination.

This is not a book about Sri Lanka’s civil war as much as it’s
about the endless horror of war. Ondaatje reveals the divine spark in
all his characters, from the most wretched gem miners to the most
despotic politicians, and makes the case that the maiming and
destruction of anyone are crimes against creation itself. Anil’s Ghost
is his finest book yet.