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Anil's Ghost

Anil's Ghost

by Michael Ondaatje

Knopf Canada | April 17, 2001 | Trade Paperback

Based on 66 ratings | Rate this
Following the phenomenal success of Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning third novel, The English Patient, expectations were almost insurmountable. The internationally acclaimed #1 bestseller had made Ondaatje the first Canadian novelist ever to win the Booker. Four years later, in 1996, a motion picture based on the book brought the story to a vast new audience. The film, starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, went on to win numerous prizes, among them nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Worldwide English-language sales of the book topped two million copies.

But in April 2000, Anil's Ghost was widely hailed as Ondaatje's most powerful and engrossing novel to date. Winning a Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize and the Giller Prize, Anil's Ghost became an international bestseller. "Nowhere has Ondaatje written more beautifully," said The New York Times Book Review.

The setting is Sri Lanka. Steeped in centuries of cultural achievement and tradition, the country has been ravaged in the late twentieth century by bloody civil war. As in The English Patient, Ondaatje's latest novel follows a woman's attempt to piece together the lost life of a victim of war. Anil Tissera, born in Sri Lanka but educated in England and the U.S., is sent by an international human rights group to participate in an investigation into suspected mass political murders in her homeland. Working with an archaeologist, she discovers a skeleton whose identity takes Anil on a fascinating journey that involves a riveting mystery. What follows, in a novel rich with character, emotion, and incident, is a story about love and loss, about family, identity and the unknown enemy. And it is a quest to unlock the hidden past - like a handful of soil analyzed by an archaeologist, the story becomes more diffuse the farther we reach into history.

A universal tale of the casualties of war, unfolding as a detective story, the book gradually gives way to a more intricate exploration of its characters, a symphony of loss and loneliness haunted by a cast of solitary strangers and ghosts. The atrocities of a seemingly futile, muddled war are juxtaposed against the ancient, complex and ultimately redemptive culture and landscape of Sri Lanka.

Anil's Ghost is Michael Ondaatje''s first novel to be set in the country of his birth. "There's a tendency with us in England and North America to say it's a book 'about Sri Lanka.' But it's just my take on a few characters, a personal tunnelling into that … The book's not just about Sri Lanka; it's a story that's very familiar in other parts of the world" - in Africa, in Yugoslavia, in South America, in Ireland. "I didn't want it to be a political tract. I wanted it to be a human study of people in the midst of fear."
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Found in: Fiction and Literature

All reviews of Anil's Ghost

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    Awful
    by nighthawk
    2 years ago

    I finished this book by skim reading it and am sure I didn't miss a thing. Read the first half but the story jumps around so much,even sentence to sentence that it just made me angry. Sentences are suppose to lead in to each other, not leap all over the place. I found this book a collection of disjointed thoughts and ideas that left no sense of having gone anywhere. I will not be buying any more of his books.

  • Was this review helpful?
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    Torture
    by Fantasy Reader4
    3 years ago

    Reading this book was basically like torture. Most of the time I was lost. I had no idea what was happening. I only read it because of school, otherwise, I will never read this book again.

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    Haunting
    by Cassandra Napoleoni
    7 years ago

    Only a handful of authors have the ability to write a verbal cinema, but luckily for Canada, Ondaajte is one of them. "Anil's Ghost" follows the superiority of "The English Patient" while introducing to the new millennium a fictitious piece flooded with graceful phrases and beautiful images exploding amid the tribulations of the late twentieth century Sri Lankan civil war. Ondaatje allows the reader to enter a world of unparalleled exotic beauty but then contrasts this with the dark evils of genocide. Anil Tissera, a skilled anthropologist and archeologist, is sent to her homeland of Ceylon to uncover who is involved in the island's mysterious murders. By returning from abroad she is distrusted by her people in the same way they distrust government officials and guerilla separtists. Digging beneath the layers of her past, Anil must search for meaning in the present to understand herself and regain her sense of belonging. Her journey is one that reexamines the significance of humanity, history, and self.

  • Anonymous

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    Meticulous Metaphors!
    by Anonymous
    7 years ago

    A daring and triumphant piece. Ondaatje's mastery of rhetoric made this a work that was impossible to put down. A shocking account of war in a country unfamilliar to western audiences. This is a must read. Enjoy!

  • Devin

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    Perfection
    by Devin
    9 years ago

    This prose made my heart move in a way it never has before. Ondaatje inserts 'random' pieces of anthropological knowledge that create wonderful lucidity. The blood rushes through me as he illustrates the beauty of the fragility of human life. More than remarkable. boomboomboomboom.

  • Daniel Meyer

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    Amazing
    by Daniel Meyer
    10 years ago

    Michael Ondaatje has proven again that, while the meaning in his book is not always immediately evident, it is well worth it to sit and ponder, for in Anil's Ghost is a vision of humanity that encompases compassion and understanding in the face of hate and injustice. Ondaatje's background (emmigrated from Sri Lanka in '63) allows him to have an educated (has he ever provided any less) point of view of the society in which he has based this tale. His background as a poet is ever evident and the prose flows like a song. I can hardly wait until his next.

  • M.

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    Anil's Ghost
    by M.
    11 years ago

    Reading this book is the literary equivalent of being locked in the bathroom with an 8-year-old Canadian Tire catalogue.

  • Michael

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    Beneath the chaos
    by Michael
    11 years ago

    There is, when one looks at the book from a romantic sense, a stunning simplcity that, in it's essence, eradicates nihilism from literature. One can accept this book at face value and not feel like they have ignored it. There is an instictive element that grasps your attention, subconsciously, and pulls you through the, somewhat, melencholy story. Oscar Wilde said, I'll believe anything as long as it's incredible, and one can easily believe this book.

  • Zoran Bozicevic

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    Storytelling without the story
    by Zoran Bozicevic
    11 years ago

    Ondaatje proved to be the master of the character descriptions. Only, in this extensive, 300-page character workout, he forgot to include the story. His perfectly described heroes exist in a storyless vacuum, author leaving the readers to wonder about the causes and circumstances leading to the situation he writes about. At the end, Anil didnÕt face her ghost, we find out almost nothing about her childhood in Sri Lanka, which would bring up the ghost. The chaos in the country, which would help us understand her fear, never develops into a true event, but we learn a thing or two about pathology along the way. It must have been a slow year in Canadian literature when ÒAnilÕs GhostÓ won its awards. From the author of ÒThe English PatientÓ one would expect more. Much more.

  • Kamalini Kuganathan

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    Indecorous Conclusion
    by Kamalini Kuganathan
    12 years ago

    Though Michael Ondaatje is an acclaimed writer, Anil’s Ghost fails to live up to standards and expectations because of an impotent plot. Ondaatje puts tremendous effort in describing his characters and sub characters, intricately painting their details chapter after chapter. However, the elements of his characters seem to overpower the plot. As a good piece of literature achieves, Anil’s Ghost fails to tie all loose ends by solving the various issues involved in the plot. Order is not restored and justice is not committed. Ondaatje seems to have a careless notion towards this piece of work of his, jading the book with unproductive subplots as page fillers. The plot and subplots are left unanswered. The reader, engrossed in the suspense with every minor subplot is jerked abruptly as his or her journey comes to a rapid screeching halt. Ondaatje, as many writers have done, seems to have been in a rush to finish his work, his piece of writing concluding in the opposite direction from where it should be.

  • Melanie

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    Not just another assignment
    by Melanie
    12 years ago

    Ahh, yet another novel assigned for yet another class...or is it? Reading this book for a university class was completely different than reading it &quot;for fun&quot;, yet threw lights on it I never would have experienced. Set in Ondaatje's native Sri Lanka, this book can really be called nothing but the over-used adjective 'haunting'. But it is haunting, literally. All of the characters are in some way haunted, whether it be by their past, their expected or non-existant future, or by people they cannot let go of.<BR><BR>My advice while reading this book: If you are going to great lengths and putting out great effort to try to put all the events and characters into order, you will miss out. Don't over-obsess about why some sections are italicized and some aren't, or asking where does this person &quot;fit&quot;, try not to focus on making it all MAKE SENSE, and just let the images and story take over...you'll end up understanding more in the end if you do.<BR>This book is three thumbs up!!

  • my

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    Do M. Ondaatjie Some Justice
    by my
    12 years ago

    Who says Ondaatjie's work is easy read? If you don't want to think or feel, go for Clancy or Grisham. Those with the harsh criticisms out there, are you capable of thinking and feeling? Anil's Ghost is about madness in politics, madness in society, and madness at heart. Ondaatjie is sketchy in his writing, as usual. He offers some minutest detail on side scenes and minor characters. But his superiority and mastery shine through when he keeps the reader focused on the main thread of the story with a minimalist approach. Any seeming digressions are done deliberately and add to the beauty of the book.

  • Geoff Tozer

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    A Profound and Moving Book
    by Geoff Tozer
    12 years ago

    The reviews which complain that this book is not about anything are by the same people who read Beckett's Three Novels or Joyce's Finnegans Wake and don't get it. There are a number of books by either Tom Clancy or Danielle Steele they may wish to read instead. But for a deeply moving look at life in a situation that is beyond comprehension, this is the book to read. Here's a hint as to who the ghost of the title is: the one who saves Anil and in doing so, dies. Also the one who gives Anil her goal in this story at the beginning. These are different characters, by the way. Figuring out how they are the same (not = identical) is the job of we who read it.

  • Lora Giangregorio

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    Review of Anil's Ghost
    by Lora Giangregorio
    12 years ago

    In reading Anil's Ghost, I learned a great deal about the political issues in Sri Lanka, and about the field of forensics. It seemed to me that the author's character development was so thorough it overshadowed the plot. I finished the book feeling that I had missed something.

  • Susie

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    Betrayal
    by Susie
    12 years ago

    After reading the English Patient (which was literally a piece of art), I was very excited about reading Anil's Ghost. However, i found myself angry after i read the last page of this book. I was extremely disappointed!! I felt betrayed! The ending was horrible! Its as if MO got tired of writing in the last 50 pages! The reader was just discarded in the end. I also felt that the charaters were let down, especially Anil. Who or what was Anil's Ghost...i dont think the story or her charater were developed enough. This book was really a collection of archeological details.

  • Vanda

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    What ghost??
    by Vanda
    12 years ago

    After reading the compelling story of The English Patient I was dying to read Anil's Ghost. I have to say his latest book is a disappointment. The story is very dry and almost has no substance. I forced myself to finish reading it just because I paid money for it.

  • Vanessa

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    Who needs sleeping pills?? Just read this book!
    by Vanessa
    12 years ago

    Wow, with how many bestseller lists this book was on you'd think it would be at least half decent!! I love reading, but not this book. This will be the first book I've given up on in a VERY long time. Even if I'm not enjoying a book I stick with it just in case it gets better. However, after reading some of the other reviews on this site I'm giving up because it doesn't seem that it has any hope of getting better. Besides, I only read one or two paragraphs and I'm asleep!! I've been trying to read this book for so long I forget what happened in the beginning!!

  • Connie

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    Big disapointment
    by Connie
    12 years ago

    I am a huge Ondaatje fan, but found this disappointing. The concept of the book is interesting, he obviously went to great lengths to research it, and the writing is lyrical as ever, but things fall apart at the end. Seems to me his editors were afraid to put a pen to this and have him tighten up the plot. My friends and I were all let down by it. If you've read The English Patient and want to read more, you are better off exploring his earlier works.

  • Nicole

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    Ondaatje
    by Nicole
    13 years ago

    Please, if you have never read Ondaatje, please do not read this novel as if it were a book. Do not expect anything - approach it with a clean palate and you will discover writing so eloquent that it cannot be described.

  • Francesco

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    A Writer's Craft, not his Masterpiece
    by Francesco
    13 years ago

    Ondaatje definitely possessed the ingredients for a great novel: interesting characters overwhelmed by civil strife, images of senseless carnage and Buddha statues being restored in Sri Lankan fields. But the main characters are overwhelmed, rather than being transformed, by their plight. The most memorable characters are secondary characters (the blind academic and his niece, the eye painter and the memory of his wife, the doctor), which made me indifferent to the central mystery. The final imagery will stay with me forever, but the unnecessary probings into the protagonist's past were taking away from the larger drama of human suffering and loss. In other words, we were being set up to focus on Anil and her mission, when, in fact, the true heroes were the "minor" characters who persevered in the face of civil war and death. So, Ondaatje's craft is evident, but the art is not transcendent.

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