Anil Tissera

Anil Tissera is the central protagonist of the novel. She is a forensic scientist and, at the time of the novel, she is 33 years old. Though she is originally from Colombo, Sri Lanka, she left fifteen years earlier to study in London. She returns for the first time since then as the appointed outsider for the U.N.’s Centre for Human Rights, which plans to pair an outside authority with a local expert to conduct forensic analyses of several skeletons found in Sri Lanka. Anil is an orphan, as both her parents passed away in a car crash several years earlier. It is noted that Anil was, during her high school years in Colombo, a well-known swimmer and diver in the area.

Anil is portrayed as headstrong and independent. For example, even her name ‘Anil’ is not the name that her parents gave her at birth...