Previous
Preface
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Anil’s Ghost, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Justice, Power, and Truth
Violence, War, and Greed
History and Memory
Work and Meaning
Westernization and Identity
Summary
Analysis
Anil arrives in Sri Lanka in March. She was born in Sri Lanka but left when she was 18 and hasn’t been back since. She has returned now to serve as a forensic anthropologist for the Centre for Human Rights, a role that will last for seven weeks. No one has high hopes for the mission, especially since Sri Lanka’s president, President Katugala, disavows any knowledge of the murders taking place on the island. For the seven weeks, Anil will work with an archaeologist named Sarath.
This passage establishes the stakes of the novel, namely that Anil has been sent to Sri Lanka to do human rights research related to the country’s civil war. Though the Sri Lankan government has ostensibly approved Anil’s visit and her research plan, that government also disavows knowledge of the crimes Anil is investigating, suggesting that there is the potential for tension between Anil and the government she seems to be investigating.
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On her first night in Sri Lanka, Anil gets a taxi from the airport in Colombo and then goes to the house that has been rented for her. She takes a sleeping pill and thinks about what her life in Sri Lanka was like before she left. She was a renowned swimmer, but she resents how accolades from swimming became part of her identity. She also thinks about her upcoming work. She’s read about the atrocities taking place in Sri Lanka, but not having been home for 15 years, she sees them from the perspective of an outsider.
Anil’s resentment of how swimming has been incorporated into her identity in Sri Lanka reflects the ambivalence that she feels about her identity in general. Though she was born in Sri Lanka, she has been away from the country for almost as long as she lived there, and she now feels like she is returning to the country as an outsider.
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On Anil’s second morning in Sri Lanka, she goes to a hospital to speak with forensic students. It’s not part of her official work, but the people who organized the project asked her to do so. There are two students. Anil is alarmed when she realizes that the first body they examine died within the past 12 hours. The man’s arms were broken before he was killed. The second body they examine shows signs that he fell from a height of at least 500 feet before striking the water, suggesting that he was pushed out of a helicopter.
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On Anil’s third day in Sri Lanka, she meets Sarath. He immediately brings up Anil’s history as a swimmer, and Anil asks him not to mention it again. Anil and Sarath talk about what is happening in Sri Lanka. Sarath explains that three different groups are fighting an unofficial war. There are insurgents, guerrillas, and the government. Sarath says that each group commits extrajudicial executions, and it's impossible to know who to blame for each killing.
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Anil and Sarath go to the Oronsay, a docked passenger liner that has been outfitted with a lab, which will serve as their home base. Inside, Anil sees that Sarath has already begun to store some of his archeological finds in the ship. Anil examines some bones, which Sarath says date back to a sixth-century grave for monks. When Anil looks at them, though, she notices something amiss with one of the bones. It doesn’t seem to be from the same period. Anil asks if they can visit the site where the bones came from, and Sarath says he’ll look into getting a permit.
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On the weekend, Anil goes to see an older woman named Lalitha. When Lalitha opens the door, Anil kisses her on both cheeks. Lalitha’s granddaughter is with her and reacts curtly to Anil. Anil explains to the granddaughter that Lalitha practically raised her (Anil). The granddaughter speaks in Tamil to Lalitha, and Anil only understands a word or two. Anil then explains to the granddaughter that both of her parents are dead, and her brother left Sri Lanka. When Anil and the granddaughter turn to look at Lalitha, they see that she has fallen asleep.
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Anil then returns to the hospital. There, she finds the senior medical officer, Dr. Perera. A few days ago, Anil attended a talk Perera gave, and she was surprised by his opinions and the subtlety of his arguments. At the hospital, though, he comes across as a petty tyrant and constantly barks orders at people he considers his inferiors. Dr. Perera stops Anil in a hallway. He asks if she’s the swimmer, and Anil tries to dodge the question. He then says that he worked with Anil’s father, Nelson Tissera, at a different hospital. Anil wants to talk to him more and reminisce about her father, but she wants to talk to him when he doesn’t seem as agitated as he is. She then tells him that she has to get to an appointment.
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Anil then goes to see Sarath. The two drink tea, and Anil makes a sarcastic remark about the competing interests at play in the violent conflict. Sarath responds that he doesn’t support one side over any of the others. When Anil returns home, she thinks about Sarath. He’s an archaeologist from the state-supported Archaeology Department, which makes Anil wonder if the government has sent him to keep tabs on her and the human rights project. Or perhaps, Anil thinks, Sarath is simply a committed archaeologist.
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In an italicized scene, an unnamed man riding on a train near Kurunegala waits for the train car to go dark in a tunnel. He knows that the darkness will last for three minutes. Once the car is dark, the man approaches a government official and wraps a chain around the government official’s neck, strangling him until the man stops moving and dies. The man then maneuvers the government official’s body to an open window and pushes him out of the train.
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After the italicized scene, the narrative about Anil resumes. While Anil was working in Guatemala, she traveled to Miami to meet Cullis, an archaeologist with whom Anil was romantically involved. Cullis was married to another woman, and Anil was skeptical that her relationship with him would be sustainable. In Miami, Anil described her work to Cullis, and Cullis could see how devoted she was to that work. In the morning, Anil woke up and used a video camera to film their hotel room, then buried the tape in Cullis’s suitcase.
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Anil first became involved with Cullis during an archaeology conference in Montreal. The people at the conference had all gone bowling, and Anil felt herself drawn to Cullis during the outing. At the end of the night, she kissed him and then confirmed that he was married.
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In Sri Lanka, while working at night in the lab on the ship, Anil accidentally cuts herself. She travels to the hospital, worried that the cut might become infected. While she’s in the waiting room, a man covered in blood sits beside her and starts reading. A nurse approaches the man, and the man eventually walks away with the nurse. Anil realizes the man is a doctor. She is so alarmed that she hadn’t been able to tell the difference between a doctor and a patient that she leaves the hospital.
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An italicized section then describes different entries of the National Atlas of Sri Lanka, including entries on the country’s climate, geography, and its history of mining. Another italicized section then describes the last known sightings of people who have recently disappeared.
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In the Civil Rights Movement office at the Nadesan Center, Anil reads through the descriptions of the last known sightings of people who have disappeared. She then picks up other reports and reads about more disappearances and killings. She thinks about the guerrillas, the insurgents, and the special forces of the government that mobilize against both groups. To Anil, it seems that there are backroom deals between different factions, and in reality, the war is run by drug-runners and gun-runners. “The reason for war is war,” she thinks.
Anil leaves the office and goes to find Sarath. The two then drive together to Bandarawela, where the skeletons that were supposedly from the sixth century were found. On the drive, Sarath says that Anil needs to be careful about what she says and to whom. He says that she sometimes comes off like a foreign journalist, meaning an outsider who is guided, to a fault, by a superficial idea of empathy. Anil asks if it was difficult to get the permit to go to Bandarawela, and Sarath says it was. Sarath mentions his wife, and Anil asks where she is now. Sarath explains that she took her own life a few years ago, shortly after leaving him. Anil apologizes for asking.
Anil asks Sarath if he knew her father (Nelson). Sarath says that he knew of him but didn’t know him personally. Anil explains that her mother and father died in a car accident after she left Sri Lanka, and she says that she missed learning things from them. Sarath explains that, as an adult, he had two teachers who were brothers. Their names were Nārada and Palipana. Nārada was a monk, who helped Sarath understand himself in a “simpler, clearer” way. One day, Nārada was murdered. Sarath gives a cryptic response when Anil asks who killed Nārada. Anil and Sarath then stop at a river and swim. When they reach Bandarawela, they rent three rooms in a guest house, two rooms for them to sleep in and one room that they’ll use as a lab.
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Anil and Sarath begin to examine the Bandarawela area, searching for human remains. They find three skeletons that seem to be from centuries ago. But then they find a fourth skeleton with ligaments still attached to the bone and carrying evidence that someone burned the body. It's clear that the skeleton is not from centuries ago. Anil and Sarath call the skeleton “Sailor.” After Anil examines the body, she also sees signs that someone exhumed the body from a previous burial to move it to this grave. Sarath says that moving a body is not necessarily a crime, but Anil pushes back and says that it suggests that a crime has been committed.
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Anil and Sarath go back and forth about what the presence of the skeleton means. Sarath then says they should call it a day and go to a local temple to see a drummer. Anil says she isn’t sure if the skeletons will be safe in the hotel and tells Sarath straightforwardly that she doesn’t know if she can trust him. She also says that she knows he has a relative who works for the government. Sarath says he hardly ever sees that relative. Anil says she’s going to stay behind, and Sarath leaves. After Sarath leaves, Anil thinks about whose skeleton Sailor might be and how the prevalence of disappearances and violence keeps people trapped in fear.
Anil then talks to the manager of the hotel to arrange dinner. The two talk, and Anil asks the manager if Sarath’s wife ever came with him to Bandarawela. The hotel manager says she does, and Anil is confused because she thought Sarath’s wife was dead. The manager says that she is alive, and Sarath mentioned her earlier that day. The manager then says that Sarath’s cousin, who works in the government, would sometimes accompany Sarath to Bandarawela as well. Anil eats and then returns to the room that they’ve set up as a lab. She takes a book and falls asleep reading. In the morning, Sarath wakes her up. She goes to take a shower. By noon, she has a splitting headache and a fever.
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Anil and Sarath set off to return to Colombo. Anil has a fever and sits in the backseat of the van, and the four skeletons are in the van too. Anil is so sick that Sarath decides to stop halfway to Colombo. In a hotel, Anil continues to struggle. She knows it must be sunstroke, malaria, or dengue fever, and she’ll get tests done to confirm what it is when she returns to Colombo. In her hotel room, she waits for a call from her friend Leaf.
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In an italicized scene, Anil recalls Sarath tracing the outline of her body on newspapers next to the four skeletons. In the hotel, in the present, Sarath brings Anil a lightbulb of a higher wattage. When he arrives, Anil thinks of him tracing the outline of her body and isn’t sure if it happened or not. Leaf then calls, but Anil struggles to make sense of what is going on. She tells Leaf she can’t remember who killed Cherry Valance (a character in a John Wayne movie).
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The next day, Anil and Sarath return to Colombo. Sarath says that they’ll work on the skeletons in the lab on the ship, and they’ll tell everyone that all of the skeletons are centuries old to avoid attracting attention. When they arrive in Colombo, they bring the skeletons to the lab on the ship. After Sarath leaves, Anil stays to examine Sailor. She thinks she finds what must be entry and exit wounds of a bullet.
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The next day, Anil goes to the hospital. She recalls how, when she was younger, her name had not initially been Anil. Instead, Anil had been her brother’s middle name, but she (Anil) argued with her parents and arranged a deal with her brother to take the name for herself. Anil then thinks about her father and how, when she was growing up, he would always drive her to swim practice early in the morning, even if he had been out most of the night dancing or conducting emergency surgeries.
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The next morning, Anil returns to the hospital. She goes to look for a woman named Chitra, who studies insects. Anil helps Chitra work on a grant, and the two then go to lunch together. After lunch, Anil asks Chitra if she (Chitra) might be able to analyze the insect pupae found with Sailor’s body to try and identify where the body had first been buried. Chitra agrees to help. Meanwhile, Sarath investigates Sailor’s skeleton in the lab. He takes two Polaroid photos of the body before removing the skull. He puts the pictures into an envelope and the skull into a plastic shopping bag. He then takes two more photos of Sailor without the skull. More than anything, Sarath now feels that he and Anil need help.
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