SOURCE: Cusk, Rachel. “Sri Lankan Skeletons.” New Statesman 129, no. 4485 (8 May 2000): 55.

In the following review, Cusk highlights the thematic significance of war and death in Anil's Ghost.

Even when writing of corruption, death and decay, Michael Ondaatje's prose is the very opposite of unsavoury. “He loosened a new tungsten carbide needle from its plastic container and attached it to a hand pick and began cleaning the bones of the first skeleton, drilling free the fragments of dirt. Then he turned on a slim hose and let it hover over each bone, air nestling into the evidence of the trauma as if he were blowing cool breath from a pursed mouth on to a child's burn.” The refinement of Ondaatje's expression acts as a balm on his subject, nestling into the evidence of its trauma. He has a way with hurt bodies, hurt minds, with what is fragile. The professions...