Played against the evocative and mysterious background of Sri Lanka's lush landscape and ancient civilization, Anil's Ghost weaves a haunting story of the search for identity within the madness of political warfare. In sometimes brief, cinematic-like passages the power and imagery of Ondaatje's language is mesmerizing and nothing short of stunning. Her task as a forensic anthropologist sent by an international human rights organization is to work with local officials in discovering the source of an organized campaign of murders inundating the island. The archaeologist from Colombo that Anil will be partnered with is Sarath Diyasena, a man whom Anil is uncertain she can trust. As body after body is brought to her, Anil realizes that she is dealing with a nameless enemy and all is not what it seems.
Recent murders are abundant and their deaths are violent and unexplained.
In this room, among these four, she was hiding among the unhistorical dead. This representative of all those lost voices. To give him a name would name the rest. Anil will begin hesitant, careful relationships with Sarath, as well as his brother, a doctor named Gamini, and the alcoholic Ananda, who is hired to reconstruct Sailor's face in an effort to restore his identity. Each carries ghosts from the past who haunt their daily lives, who send them into the thick of the killing fields in search of one victim's identity.