As a Buddhist, I'm fascinated by Sri Lanka who preserved the Pali Canon and allows us to keep the memorized stories and teaching from the Buddha through the mist of time. When the Buddha died, they got together and tried to remember the teachings. Hundreds of years later, writing became more of a thing and they wrote down what the oral tradition had memorized. Slowly slowly the teachings made it to Sri Lanka around 3 ace. And the English translations I read today are from those preserved writings. It turns out there was a terrible war dated between 1983 to 2009 with an estimated 70,000 had been killed by 2007. United Nations estimated a total of 80,000–100,000 deaths. Ondaatje's novel came out in 2000. He was born in Sri Lanka and lives in Canada. He spent his first 11 years there, then went to England. He went to Canada in 62 when he was 19. There is a delicate sensibility, he's a empath, a highly sensitive person perhaps. Anil is a forensic anthropologist . I had a q...