The disappeared are those whose stories are rarely told. In different countries, at different times, people have vanished without any record and without any resolution. Anil's Ghost is the story of Sailor, a skeleton found by Anil and Sarath, an expat Sri Lankan forensic scientist and a Sri Lankan archaeologist working to piece together Sailor's story. The book speaks in scales - one disappeared can represent millions. One person can represent a village.

Ondaatje is writing of the massacres in the 1980s, although the book could be written today. He clearly dove deep into the discovery of the disappeared when he wrote this, and constructs a narrative that is touching and personal, as well as critical and raw. A little predictable in its plot, the story nonetheless manages to give voice to the disappeared in a way I haven't read previously in a novel.