Ondaatje's work is always challenging. He is at his best at an absolute removal from his subjects. In uninteruppted focus on disparate characters that are thrown together we see them emerge from their isolation as seperate flames from the background. Sparsely, individually, and lyrically they can call to us.

This work is set in Sri Lanka, and involves an ex-pat forensic anthropologist, Anil, returning to her country to try to document the ungoing civil rights and torture that is occuring. She meets up with an Archeologist, his brother a Doctor, and a Painter turned laborer.

What follows is an atmospheric and unreal exploration of the numbness that occurs when all hope is lost, and the unliveable becomes the norm. Anil goes home with her evidence, shattered by the experience, but leaving the others to bear the cost of truth.

Ondaatje left Sri Lanka in 1962. I think the author's struggle to get the necessary distance for his writing technique to work was harder to achieve than in his other works.

Left on a table to find a new reader!

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