Katabasis and the politics of grief in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost

Abstract

In this article, I argue that while Anil’s forensic work in Sri Lanka can be read through the lens of detective fiction, it can also be read through a very different lens, namely that of katabasis, or descent into the underworld. Seeing herself as a detective, Anil attempts to enact a powerful fantasy of invulnerability that allows her to distance herself from both the victims and the perpetrators of the crimes she sees. The text itself, though, suggests a different reading, one Anil seems only to recognize very late in the novel. In this alternative reading, Anil’s time in Sri Lanka is a descent into the underworld, a descent that mirrors the experience of grief. In this light, her journey is a realization of shared vulnerability, shared human precarity. The recognition of a shared human exposure to harm is, I argue, also the opening up of a different kind of politics.