This summer I have been thinking about what it takes to unearth a story — tenacity, self-belief, a furious compassion for the dead. So I looked to Anil Tissera, who returns to Sri Lanka after a long absence to excavate a truth so elusive and so charged that she can hardly trust anyone to help her.
“Anil’s Ghost,” set during the Sri Lankan civil war (1983-2009), turned 26 this year. Its author, Michael Ondaatje, was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka and has lived
in England and Canada. In 2016, he stopped by Columbia, MO to appear as the keynote speaker of the inaugural Unbound Book Festival. By all accounts, the speech was a hit. (We were unfortunately unable to book Mr. Ondaatje for our upcoming book discussion on July 2, but we hope you’ll join us anyways.)
“Be careful what you reveal,” warns Sarath Diyasena in one of his first conversations with Anil. Sarath is the local archaeologist assigned to work with Anil, a forensic anthropologist sent overseas by a human rights group to investigate political murders. It is unclear to Anil if hers and Sarath’s interests truly align — they have differing attitudes toward both truth and governance. But the momentum of discovery is irresistible to these two students of history: the recovery of a skeleton from an ancient burial site, conspicuously newer than the others, sends Anil and Sarath on a winding, wondrous and devastating journey.
Sometimes the true story hides in plain sight. Sometimes it can only be accessed via careful untruths. Sometimes it is an unnamable recognition that registers quietly, cell by cell. On her mission to unearth the story of a single skeleton, Anil collects other heavy artifacts, too: memories of her ancestral home; the casual, suffocating grief of war; a final sacrifice that walks beside her as a ghostly companion forever.
We’ll be talking about “Anil’s Ghost” during our First Thursday Book Discussion, July 2 from 12 – 1 p.m. You’ll find us in the Children’s Program Room on the first floor. Your presence and insights are deeply welcome!
Thanks for reading,
Karena
