From the author of the ‘ English Patient’, Micheal Ondaatje, comes ‘Anil’s Ghost’, a powerful thriller set in Sri Lanka. The monsoon island is the home of 400 varieties of birds, including the Bulbul. It has caves with Buddhist paintings. During both the World Wars, mica, the purest graphite, and numerous other minerals were mined in this country. However, Lanka in the 80s and 90s is a war-ravaged country, torn apart by three factions, the government, the insurgents and the extremists. This war has taken on a new form today.

After a fifteen-year absence, the protagonist, forensic scientist Anil, returns to this violent land as a volunteer of the United Nations. She is a Sinhala by birth, educated in England and America and has a strong belief in human rights. It is through her eyes that we see the desecrated country, where death, destruction and disappearance are commonplace.

Life has little value. Gruesome murders are committed in mines or other remote places with dynamite, grenades or knives. Lanka’s inhabitants, both Tamilians and Singhalese live in mortal fear, surrounded by carnage and annihilation. The living search for their missing relatives, torn between their feelings of uncertainty and the dread that they may not find their loved ones alive. The dead are burnt, thrown into rivers or buried in graves to share space with the remains of those who departed centuries ago. Not even hospitals are safe havens from the grisly violence.

Anil is no stranger to death. She has seen in first hand while working in Guatemala and the Congo. Her experiences in these places pale in comparison to what she experiences in Sri Lanka.

She must join forces with an enigmatic local forensic expert, Sarath to investigate the mystery surrounding an unidentified skeleton, which she calls ‘Sailor’. She suspects that the Lankan government has a hand in Sailor’s death and is unsure if she can trust Sarath completely. She does not know if he has loyalty to a certain faction. She does not even know Sarath’s marital status. Both Sarath and Anil travel to remote perilous places of the island, looking for answers. They must seek the help of one of Sarath’s old mentors, an expert on Sinhala History and Gamini, Sarath’s diametrically different brother.

At this point Ondaatje masterfully segues into the past of the two central characters. We are presented with events and relationships in the lives of Anil and Sarath that helped shaped them into the people they have become. Anil has been married and divorced once in her youth. She is still tormented by memories of an affair she had in the past. Groomed in the west, Anil is a believer that she can induce a change for the better through her work.

Sarath on the other hand, having grown in the east, though very committed to his work, is not optimistic. He is cynical that even when the truth is revealed it will be of little help in abating the existing situation in the country. Ancient tradition and modern forensic science join hands to solve the puzzle surrounding the corpse. The investigation places Anil and Sarath a morbid world of politics and genocide. Anil is introduced the elaborate Buddhist ritual of painting of the face of deities. She hires an expert face painter to reconstruct the face of Sailor and resurrect his ‘ghost’. This act is followed by one revelation after another, leading to an unpredictable climax.

This book is a spellbinding masterpiece from Booker Prize winning author Michael Ondaatje. With excellent imagery and a masterful plot, Ondaatje holds the reader’s interest till the very end. It is a voyage into terror, into the indomitable the human spirit and into the fascinating science of forensics. It is a must read for fans of contemporary classics.

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