Sri Lankan Literature in English

Issue 5.2 Performing Arts and South Asian Literature, Editorial

by Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings

Issue 5.2 Performing Arts and South Asian Literature, Table of Contents

by Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings

'Historical Relations': Modes of Discourse in Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family

by John Thieme

Hard copy only -- published in India and UK:

Journal of Indian Writing in English, 16, 2 (1988): 136-46;

repr. in Narrative Strategies in Canadian Literature: Feminism and Postcolonialism, ed. Coral A. Howells and Lynette Hunter, Milton Keynes and Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1991: 40-48.

Please contact author if you have difficulty obtaining a copy.

Truthful (Hi) Stories In Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost

by Lydia Kokkola

Truthful (Hi)stories in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost

by Lydia Kokkola

This copy is the pre-proof version. The full article is available:


Kokkola, Lydia. 2009. Truthful (hi)stories in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost. In Finch Jason, Martin Gill, Anthony Johnson, Iris Lindahl-Raittila, Inna Lindgren, Tuija Virtanen and Brita Wårvik (eds.). Humane Readings: Essays on literary mediation and communication in honour of Roger D. Sell. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins pp. 119–133.

This paper examines the ways in which fiction and historical fact are combined in Michael Ondaatje’s novel, Anil’s... more This paper examines the ways in which fiction and historical fact are combined in Michael Ondaatje’s novel, Anil’s Ghost (2000), which set against the backdrop of the civil war in Sri Lanka. Kokkola argues that the novel foregrounds the contested nature of truth by questioning its value in the context of such a complex conflict. Ondaatje undermines the possibility of truth existing independently of circumstance by dismissing forensic science’s claim to be a neutral method of obtaining fact. Instead, the contingent nature of truthfulness is recognised and the only truth which is valued is that which leads to healing and reconcilliation.

Keywords: Anil’s Ghost, truth, Truth and Reconcialiation Commission (TRC), forensic science.