Anil's Ghost

Ondaatje's Sri Lanka is a country under the pressure of civil war in the late 1980s and early 1990s, seen through a forensic investigation. The map runs from the capital, Colombo, up the central axis to the ancient Buddhist ruins and monasteries of the north-central plain and out to the tea-country hills, where the war's disappearances surface as bones.

Anil Tissera

Colombo

Arrival

A forensic pathologist trained abroad flies home to Sri Lanka on a human-rights posting and sets up in a laboratory attached to an old archaeological base in the capital. Colombo is where the assignment begins and where the pressure of a government keen to control the findings is first felt.

Opening section

explicit Colombo is named in the novel as the point of return and the base of the investigation; sited at the city centre, since the archaeological headquarters and its makeshift laboratory are not tied to a single verifiable address.

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