Anil's ghost

Includes acknowledgement.

Anil Tissera is a forensic anthropologist who returns to Sri Lanka, the island of her birth, after fifteen years in the West. As a member of an international human rights organization, her task is to investigate possible "extrajudicial executions" by the government. When she and Sarath Diyasena, an archaeologist assigned by the government to work with her, discover a recently buried skeleton among several ancient ones in a site accessible only by the army, they realize that the mystery surrounding this body–whom they call Sailor–might shed light on the disappearances of countless people. As the search for Sailor’s identity and his killers becomes a passionate obsession, Anil is forced to risk her own life to uncover secrets that the government will do almost anything to protect.

While Anil and Sarath pursue the mystery of Sailor, other extraordinary characters come into play. Sarath’s brother Gamini, an amphetamine-addicted surgeon, spends his days and nights in the emergency room of Colombo’s central hospital attending to the victims of bombings and other atrocities. Ananda, who is called out of the gem mines to reconstruct a face for Sailor, does brilliant work as an artist in the mornings and drinks himself into a stupor in the afternoons, crushed with grief by the disappearance of his beloved wife. The blind archaeologist Palipana, Sarath’s mentor and former teacher, ekes out a living in the ruins of a Buddhist monastery in the forest and shares with Anil and Sarath his unworldly perspective on Sri Lanka’s ancient history and its violent present.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/124583/anils-ghost-by-michael-ondaatje/9780375724374/readers-guide/