Book Club Discussion Questions
Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
The questions,
discussion topics, and suggested reading list that follow are intended to
enhance your group's reading and discussion of Michael Ondaatje's
Anil's
Ghost, his first novel since the internationally acclaimed and Booker Prize
winner
The English Patient. A literary spellbinder which unfolds against
the deeply evocative background of Sri Lanka's landscape and ancient
civilization,
Anil's Ghost is a story about love, family, identity, the
unknown enemy, and the quest to unlock the hidden past--a powerful story
propelled by a riveting mystery.
Anil Tissera is a
forensic anthropologist who returns to Sri Lanka, the island of her birth, after
fifteen years in the West. As a member of an international human rights
organization, her task is to investigate possible "extrajudicial
executions" by the government. When she and Sarath Diyasena, an
archaeologist assigned by the government to work with her, discover a recently
buried skeleton among several ancient ones in a site accessible only by the
army, they realize that the mystery surrounding this body--whom they call
Sailor--might shed light on the disappearances of countless people. As the
search for Sailor's identity and his killers becomes a passionate obsession,
Anil is forced to risk her own life to uncover secrets that the government will
do almost anything to protect.
While Anil and Sarath pursue the mystery of Sailor, other extraordinary
characters come into play. Sarath's brother Gamini, an amphetamine-addicted
surgeon, spends his days and nights in the emergency room of Colombo's central
hospital attending to the victims of bombings and other atrocities. Ananda, who
is called out of the gem mines to reconstruct a face for Sailor, does brilliant
work as an artist in the mornings and drinks himself into a stupor in the
afternoons, crushed with grief by the disappearance of his beloved wife. The
blind archaeologist Palipana, Sarath's mentor and former teacher, ekes out a
living in the ruins of a Buddhist monastery in the forest and shares with Anil
and Sarath his unworldly perspective on Sri Lanka's ancient history and its
violent present.
With
Anil's Ghost, Michael Ondaatje has created a hauntingly beautiful
and unforgettable novel of an island people trapped in a deadly civil war.
Discussion Questions
- Juxtapositions and fragments are central to the style and structure
of Anil's Ghost. The novel opens with a scene in italics, in which we are
introduced to Anil as part of a team of scientists unearthing the bodies of
missing people in Guatemala. Then there is a brief scene in which Anil arrives
in Sri Lanka to begin her investigation for the human rights group. This is
followed by another scene in italics, describing "the place of a complete
crime"--a place where Buddhist cave sculptures were "cut out of the
walls with axes and saws" [p. 12]. How do these sections--upon which the
author does not comment--work together, and what is the cumulative effect of
such brief scenes?
- Why is the story of how Anil got her name [pp. 67-8] important to the
construction of her character? Does it imply that she has created an identity
for herself, based on fierce internal promptings, that is at odds with her
parents' wishes for her? Is Anil's personality well-suited to the conditions in
which she finds herself in Sri Lanka?
- Forensic expertise such as Anil's often occupies a central place in
the mystery genre--as in the popular Kay Scarpetta mysteries by Patricia
Cornwell or in the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In what
ways does Anil's Ghost fit into the genre of mystery fiction, and how
does it transcend such a classification?
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- How does the author develop themes of identity and belonging throughout the narrative?
- What role does the setting play in shaping the characters' decisions and relationships?
- Discuss how the ending reframes the events of the story. Were you surprised?
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Vintage.
Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.
