Sri Lankan "Gates of Fire": Michael Ondaatje's Transnational Literature, from Running in the Family to Anil's Ghost

This article examines the implications of reading Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost (2000) - a fictional treatment of the aftermath of civil war in Sri Lanka, from the point of view of a reluctant returnee to the island -in the context of Stephen Clingman's assertions about " transnational fiction" as a " new way to understand the complexities of identity and location". The article analyses the author's adoption and adaptation of religious and mythical motifs in the novel, rereads the text's recuperative religious/secular conclusion and considers the travel-inflected foundations of Anil's Ghost in a text concerned with Ondaatje's own return to the island, his Sri Lankan " travel memoir" Running in the Family (1982). The article presents Ondaatje's work as a challenge to received political and cultural ideas about Sri Lanka.