An April, 2000 Salon review of Anil's Ghost addresses the morally demanding task Ondaatje had with writing in his usual poetic mode while also finding a way to responsibly address the atrocities of Sri Lanka's civil war:

Ondaatje has set himself a daunting problem: to write a narrative about a matter of extreme moral gravity, keep it as clean and unsentimental and straightforward as the subject requires and also make it a poem, get it off the ground. He doesn't always succeed, but when he does, the liftoff is almost palpable. The mystique of archaeology, that lifelong love affair with the past, is beautifully and enigmatically brought to life. His description of the painting of the Buddha's eyes -- which he symbolically equates with the redemptive act of writing, along with the disciplines of both forensics and archaeology -- is a tour de force.

And it does work, very well. Cultural artifacts are the historial records for mankind's past as well as signposts for the future. They are of human behavior but at the same time, outside as well. They are both immediate and distant. And these are the same qualities an author needs to balance in a narrative text in order to adequately write about horrific historical events, in order to keep it from being over factual (cold and lifeless) or heavyhanded (sentimental).