Vous voulez voir cette page en français ? Cliquez ici.

59 used & new from CDN$ 0.01
See All Buying Options
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
 
Anil's Ghost
 
See larger image 
Share your own customer images
Publisher: learn how customers can search inside this book.

Anil's Ghost (Paperback)

by Michael Ondaatje (Author)
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (133 customer reviews)

Available from these sellers.


10 new from CDN$ 6.23 49 used from CDN$ 0.01

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

In the Skin of a Lion

In the Skin of a Lion

by Michael Ondaatje
4.0 out of 5 stars (48)  CDN$ 15.33
Gothic Canada: Reading the Spectre of a National Literature

Gothic Canada: Reading the Spectre of a National Literature

by Associate Professor Justin D. Edwards
CDN$ 33.40
The English Patient

The English Patient

by Michael Ondaatje
4.1 out of 5 stars (228)  CDN$ 15.33
A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel

A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel

by Haruki Murakami
4.3 out of 5 stars (73)  CDN$ 13.83
Kim

Kim

by Rudyard Kipling
3.8 out of 5 stars (44)  CDN$ 4.75
› Explore similar items

Product Details

Product Description

Book Description

With his first novel since the internationally acclaimed The English Patient, Booker Prize—winning author Michael Ondaatje gives us a work displaying all the richness of imagery and language and the piercing emotional truth that we have come to know as the hallmarks of his writing.

Anil’s Ghost transports us to Sri Lanka, a country steeped in centuries of tradition, now forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of civil war. Into this maelstrom steps Anil Tissera, a young woman born in Sri Lanka, educated in England and America, who returns to her homeland as a forensic anthropologist sent by an international human rights group to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island. What follows is a story about love, about family, about identity, about the unknown enemy, about the quest to unlock the hidden past–a story propelled by a riveting mystery. Unfolding against the deeply evocative background of Sri Lanka’s landscape and ancient civilization, Anil’s Ghost is a literary spellbinder–Michael Ondaatje’s most powerful novel yet.

From the Back Cover

“Gorgeously exotic…. As he did in The English Patient, Mr. Ondaatje is able to commingle anguish and seductiveness in fierce, unexpected ways.”–The New York Times
See all Product Description

Suggested Tags from Similar Products

 (What's this?)
Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
 
(1)
(1)

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What do customers ultimately buy after viewing this item?

Anil's Ghost
84% buy the item featured on this page:
Anil's Ghost 3.5 out of 5 stars (133)
The Lovely Bones
7% buy
The Lovely Bones 3.8 out of 5 stars (2,078)
CDN$ 9.00
Coming Through Slaughter
4% buy
Coming Through Slaughter 3.4 out of 5 stars (14)
CDN$ 15.33
Still Alice
4% buy
Still Alice 4.4 out of 5 stars (32)
CDN$ 5.49
Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

133 Reviews
5 star:
 (39)
4 star:
 (35)
3 star:
 (27)
2 star:
 (18)
1 star:
 (14)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.5 out of 5 stars (133 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most helpful customer reviews

 
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful in parts, dissonant as whole, Jun 22 2003
By S. Park (Bay Area, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Having missed out on "The English Patient" I wanted to catch up on Ondaatje with this book. I was disappointed, and below is why. The main characters, Anil (a forensic researcher educated in the west and dispatched to Sri Lanka by a human rights organization to investigate disappearances of Sri Lankans), Sarath (a native Sri Lankan archeologist assigned to work with Anil), and Gamini (brother of Sarath who is an MD), in my view, all failed to develop into concrete characters. Don't get me wrong, I found Ondaatje's prose beautiful. There were beautiful passages describing past (as opposed to the ongoing storyline, which was to identify the identity of a certain corpse) experiences of each of the characters. The problem I had was connecting any one past experience to another of the same character. It gave me the sense that the characters were manufactured, as the union of experiences that have no intersection. This was most pronounced in Anil -- I never understood her drive to uncover the identity of the corpse. In the same vein I found the novel's reference to the Sri Lankan civil war also unsatisfactory. Other than the landscape the author portrayed, there were no particular, intrinsic reason linking why the background of the novel should be Sri Lanka at all. Throughout the novel the war remained "anonymous," with no specific characteristics of its own, serving as a backdrop that justified the ongoing violence.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


 
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An Artist Writes History, Dec 9 2006
By Henry Bee (Burnaby, BC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Anil's Ghost (Paperback)
Michael Ondaatje's latest novel, Anil's Ghost, a post-modern investigative fiction about the land of Sri Lanka, is a showcase of the author's graceful yet powerful writing. Popularly known as the Pearl of the Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka is a nation that has been torn by a bloody civil war between the Sinhalese-dominated government and Tamil separatists. There is no room for peace. The estimated 20-year toll is 17,000 dead.

Anil, like Ondaatje, born a Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, represents the West's scientific but ultimately ignorant ways. The distanced and emotionally detached narrative voice thus makes sense, because the people of the West, having been raised up in a culture built on peace and stability can never fully understand the East, which has evolved deviously through endless trauma. The dominant male voice of the narrator perfectly speaks forth the author's repressed emotions with subtle ambiguity and leaves the reader feeling one has nothing to cry for and everything to cry about - perhaps this is how we are supposed to feel when death touches a part of our life, every day.

Even the most experienced readers can feel intimidated by the heterotopic plot if one does not read like an archaeologist; one must dig through the fragmented and layered subtexts to unearth a truth that is stagnant, rotten and good-for-nothing. It is only natural, then, that the novel ends not with truth, but with beauty. High above the fields, Ananda chisels and paints the eyes of the statuesque Buddha; he is able to see "all the fibres of natural history around him." "He could witness the smallest approach of a bird, every flick of its wind, or a hundred-mile storm coming down off the mountains near Gonagola and skirting to the plains. He could feel each current of wind, every lattice-like green shadow created by cloud." Nothing is more harmonious and elegant than the artistic resolution of violent human history through poetry. Anil's Ghost is an affair with the English language, commanded effortlessly by a master writer.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


 
5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating book!, Jun 3 2002
By clau (mexico) - See all my reviews
The story is amazing! You find yourself transported to a far away country, to a forensic lab, to beautiful magical ruins. Reading this book you will be taken away in a spiritual trip to a country in the middle of a bloody civil war, and somehow you will filled with peace. This book is a movie written in the most beautiful words!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 		 Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Ondaatje Challenging Hollywod: Try This!
This book was a nice break from my study of Hinduism and Buddhism. It brings one to the world of today's Sri Lanka. Read more
Published on May 22 2002 by Rex Dillon

2.0 out of 5 stars Worth one and a half stars. Almost obscene in its fatuity
This is supposedly a novel about the Sri Lankan civil war. In fact it is nothing of the kind. The novel does take place in Sri Lanka, there is certainly a war going on, with... Read more
Published on May 14 2002 by pnotley@hotmail.com

2.0 out of 5 stars Yawn....
I really detested the movie "The English Patient", but I realize that books are almost always superior to the movies, so I thought I would give this book a chance... Read more
Published on May 3 2002

1.0 out of 5 stars My two cents...
Ok. I don't write a lot of reviews. I usually only feel compelled to review a book I've read when I have really felt strongly about it one way or another. Read more
Published on April 4 2002 by KayCeeKay

3.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful imagery, but a meandering mess
Perhaps Michael Ondaatje is more of a poet than a novelist, as his eleven books of poetry (compared with four novels) might suggest. Read more
Published on Mar 31 2002 by J. Mullin

5.0 out of 5 stars horrific events and characters who inspire hope
Ondaatje writes about horrific events but he sets them side by side with characters so compelling, sympathetic and filled with goodness that you can't help but feel that the... Read more
Published on Mar 24 2002 by Alison Clement

5.0 out of 5 stars A Different Kind Of Murder Mystery
Anil, an Americanized Sri Lankan, returns to her homeland as a forensic specialist representing a Geneva-based human rights organization. Read more
Published on Mar 22 2002 by Bruce Boatner

3.0 out of 5 stars Almost great
A fun read, but it's missing... something.
In the Skin of a Lion is Ondaatje's best. English Patient is really good, too, as are some of his other books. Read more
Published on Feb 26 2002

3.0 out of 5 stars unsatisfying
I'm a fan of Ondaatje's and looked forward to this book very much. The story was gripping and intriguing, but it deteriorated as the book went along. Read more
Published on Feb 22 2002

3.0 out of 5 stars Well...
I thought "Anil's Ghost" was good because of the writing style. For me, it was beautifully poetic and for the most part, easy to follow. Read more
Published on Feb 17 2002 by Sarah Martinez

Only search this product's reviews


Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Feedback

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.