Anil's Ghost [signed] [first edition]

Like Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel, THE ENGLISH PATIENT, ANIL'S GHOST is set during a war, but this is not World War II. This is the sectarian upheaval that ripped Sri Lanka apart in the 1980s and '90s. Anil Tissera, a native Sri Lankan, returns, after 15 years in the United States, as a member of an international human rights fact-finding mission. A forensic anthropologist, she is thrown in with Sarath Diyasena, an archaeologist whose political affiliations, if any, are murky. Together they search for the group behind the organized murders on the island, only to discover evidence of a government-sponsored murder. As Anil begins the investigation, she is caught in a web of politics, paranoia, and tragedy. A poetic meditation on identity and loyalty. "Ondaatje's novel satisfies one of the most exalted purposes of fiction: to illuminate the human condition through pity and terror. It may well be the capstone of his career." (Publishers Weekly)