Invisible Victims, Visible Absences

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Lipson Freed
Keyword(s):  
Michael Ondaatje ◽  
The Novel ◽  
American Film ◽  
Anil's Ghost

Chapter 3 explores the haunting traces that remain in the wake of political disappearance in the novel Anil’s Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje, and the American film Missing (1982), directed by Costa-Gavras. Although ostensibly dedicated to recovering the identities of individual victims, both works ultimately subordinate the mimetic particularity of these individuals to their larger thematic projects, insuring their enduring relevance long after the conflicts they depict have been consigned to history. While these thematic frameworks allow these works to become meaningful—and ethically consequential—beyond the particular contexts that inspire them, they also exclude entire categories of victims from the compass of their recuperative efforts.

Celebrating Lindsay Anderson's In Celebration

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 370-377
Author(s):  
Brian McFarlane
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
American Film ◽  
Royal Court ◽  
Television Version

On stage, Lindsay Anderson directed ten plays by David Storey, who also wrote the novel on which This Sporting Life is based. Anderson directed Storey's In Celebration both in the theatre, at the Royal Court in 1969, and on television, for the American Film Theatre in 1975. Although it focuses primarily on the television version of In Celebration, a work which is all too often neglected in critical discussions of Anderson's output, this article examines Anderson as a director for both stage and screen, and also explores the numerous significant links between Storey's and Anderson's oeuvres.

Unofficial Wars: The Politics of Disappearance

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 642-651
Author(s):  
Gabriele Schwab
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Working Through ◽  
Local Setting ◽  
State Terrorism ◽  
Anil's Ghost ◽  
History Of

This article examines Michael Ondaatje’s 2001 novelAnil’s Ghost, placing it within the context of a history of disappearance as a form of state terrorism on a global level. It contests the controversial response that Ondaatje’s work received, which alleged lack of political engagement in the novel on account of what critics saw as its ‘Westernised approach’. Instead, what is argued here is thatAnil’s Ghostpresents a particular form of ‘working through’, first by approaching disappearances through the embedded lives and subjectivities of targeted populations, and second by using the specific historical and local setting in Sri Lanka to explore the politics of disappearances as a global phenomenon.

scholarly journals Iraq Wars from the other Side: Transmodern Reconciliation in Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer

Societies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
José Yebra
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
The Other ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
The Novel ◽  
American Film ◽  
Iraq Wars ◽  
American Film Industry ◽  
Do So

In the last years, more and more literary accounts of recent and current wars in the Middle East have been published. In most cases, they are authored from a Western viewpoint and provide a narrow account of the Muslim world. This article focuses on Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer because it opens the scope. That is, it constitutes an alternative to the imagery of the American film industry. Moreover, as Antoon is a Christian, his account of contemporary Iraq is particularly peripheral and hybrid. To analyse the novel, this article makes use of Transmodernity, a concept coined by Rosa María Rodríguez Magda in 1989. Yet, instead of Magda’s Transmodernity as a neatly Euro-centric phenomenon of worldwide connectivity, Ziauddin Sardar’s version of the concept is preferred. Sardar’s Transmodernity adds to connectivity a message of reconciliation between progress and tradition, particularly in the context of non-Western cultures. This paper defends that Antoon’s novel opens the debate on Islam to challenge the prejudiced Western discourses that have ‘legitimized’ war. To do so, Sardar’s ‘borders’ and Judith Butler’s grievability are particularly useful. In a Transmodern context, novels like Antoon’s show that humans should never be bare lives.

scholarly journals Imagining Sri Lanka

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derick Ariyam
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Michael Ondaatje ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Shyam Selvadurai ◽  
The Family ◽  
Anil's Ghost

<p>Analyzes the works of three Sri Lankan expatriates, the writers, Shyam Selvadurai and Michael Ondaatje, and the artist, M.I.A., giving particular attention to Selvadurai's Funny Boy and Ondaatje's Running in the Family, Anil's Ghost, and The Cinnamon Peeler. Though all three have been charged as "inauthentic" due to their dislocated positions, uncovers the various productive and complicated ways Sri Lanka has been configured by those outside its shores.</p>

scholarly journals Descriptive and Normative Norms in Film Adaptation: The Hays Office and the American Film Noir

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 167-188
Author(s):  
Patrick Cattrysse
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Film Noir ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
The Novel ◽  
American Film ◽  
Written Text

The study of the normative and descriptive rules of adaptation in the American film noir replaces the usual textual analysis with an intersystemic analysis of the process of adaptation. Avoiding in this way an evaluation of the accuracy of the film with respect to the novel makes it possible to examine how certain social norms and certain narrative models will determine the passage from the written text to the screen.

scholarly journals Modalities of representation and perception in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost

2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 113
Author(s):  
Sigrid Renaux
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Michael Ondaatje ◽  
Anil's Ghost

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2017v70n1p113Este estudo analisa a maneira pela qual a interdependência da representação e percepção da realidade é exemplificada e questionada em O Fantasma de Anil, de Michael Ondaatje (2000). Neste trabalho de literatura de resistência, através de um narrador onisciente, entramos não apenas nos espaços geográficos e na história cultural do Sri Lanka, mas nos encontramos participando da luta diária do povo para sobreviver, identificar e buscar justiça para os muitos mortos neste conflito entre grupos étnicos e o governo. Esta fragmentação da estrutura narrativa - lançando dúvidas sobre as relações conflituosas estabelecidas entre o presente e o passado dos personagens, entre valores ocidentais e orientais em relação ao conceito de verdade, a busca de identidade e amor perdidos - destaca ainda o intercâmbio entre representações e percepções da realidade.

scholarly journals Bewilderment and conviction: the portrayal of madness in Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter

2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 451-453
Author(s):  
Adam Polnay
Keyword(s):  
New Orleans ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Michael Ondaatje ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Wide Range

SummaryThe scraps of historical data that exist about Buddy Bolden – a cornet player from New Orleans who influenced early jazz – have evoked curiosity in a wide range of writers, including psychiatrists. The latter are interested because Bolden ‘went berserk in a parade’ at the age of 29 and spent the rest of his life in an asylum. This article is about the novel Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje, which is based on Bolden's life. I discuss how the form of the text – including its refusal to comment on where sense is lost – conveys to readers the bewilderment and conviction of Bolden's experience and allows them to share something of this.

scholarly journals THE FAITHFUL KNIGHT OF THE KING WITH NO KINGDOM. THE CASE OF LÁSZLÓ ALMÁSY. (THE ENGLISH PATIENT)

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
György Csepeli ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Michael Ondaatje ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Coup D'etat ◽  
The Real

The paper will present the sociological and psychological complexities behind the encounter of Charles, last Emperor and King of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and his young admirer, László Almásy at Easter, 1921. The King, withdrawing from power in 1918, and the young man Almásy met in the palace of the Bishop of Szombathely in 1921 in the night hours of Great Saturday. The following morning the King was to make a journey to Budapest to meet Miklós Horthy, Regent of Hungary, whom he had made Admiral three years before. Almásy was the driver of the car bringing the King to Budapest. Horthy and the King met in the Royal Castle of Buda where Charles had been coronated as King of Hungary in December 1917. The Admiral was unwilling to transfer the power and sent the King back immediately. Almásy had become the knight of the king involuntarily but, as it will be demonstrated, his role in the attempted coup d’etat of the King was far from being accidental. Michael Ondaatje published a novel in 1992 entitled The English Patient. Based on the novel, Anthony Minghella directed a romantic war drama film of the same title in 1996. The character named as the “English Patient” was the Hungarian driver of Charles IV attempting to get his throne back in 1921. The real Almásy, however, had a much more romantic life than his fictitious counterpart.

The English Patient: Michael Ondaatje’s Characterization of the Nurse–Patient Relationship

2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Metcalf
Keyword(s):  
Nursing Students ◽  
Health Science ◽  
Michael Ondaatje ◽  
Science Class ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Patient Relationship ◽  
Unique Character

I recently used The English Patient (both the novel and the movie) with an undergraduate health science class to explore the unique character of the patient–provider relationship. Through the interactions of a young Canadian nurse and her “English” patient, author Michael Ondaatje presents an interesting view of the nurse–patient relationship. In this essay, I use quotations from the novel to demonstrate that Ondaatje sees the nurse–patient relationship as somber, sensual, and compassionate. The theme is particularly relevant to nursing students and those who teach them.

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