Introduction

320
Sonja Lehmann
This reflection takes place after the events narrated in the novel have ended since
Sarath is already dead. Only his “memory” remains whereas Gamini who is alive
could in reality be a part of Anil’s life. In addition, Anil seems to be still in Sri
Lanka and undecided whether she should leave or not. She has not yet disappeared
like the hero of Western novels who leaves the country after his job is
done and does not care anymore what happens there as Gamini dismissively
points out: “So the war, to all purposes, is over. That’s enough reality for the
West” (AG 286). For Anil, however, the war is not so easily over. Another passage
states, “Anil would never get over her time here” (AG 202). It has deeply
influenced her because she feels both Sri Lankan and Western at the end of the
novel but in her case, having a transnational identity and identifying with both
cultures left her feeling conflicted and uneasy because her experience has shown
her that not all differences can be reconciled. She nevertheless does not reject her
transnational identity. The text indicates that she returns to the country: “Years
later she might see an etching or a drawing and understand something about it,
not sure why – unless she were told that the walawwa she lived in had belonged to
the artist’s family and that the artist had also lived there for a time” (AG 202). The
connection and identification with the country has obviously not stopped even
years later. Thus, unlike Ondaatje’s, Anil’s transnational ways of belonging highlight
that transnational identities can be a very complicated and unsettling affair.
5.2. In the Skin of a Lion: Transformative Space and the Narrative of the Self
“I will wander through the wilderness” reads the first epigraph of In the Skin of a
Lion, and it could hardly capture the novel’s main theme better, since this is a story
of wanderings, or, in other words, of migration. Almost all characters in the novel
engage in some form of migration from the Finnish loggers in Patrick’s childhood
to Ambrose Small, Clara and, of course, the immigrant community Patrick encounters
in Toronto. As in Anil’s Ghost the peregrinations and migrations are also
journeys towards forming transnational identities during which the characters
struggle to find their place in Canadian society and come to terms with their initial
feelings of displacement. However, in In the Skin of a Lion forming transnational
identities is not only reflected in the characters’ migrations but especially in symbolic
transformative spaces they are located in.
5.2.1. Actual and Metaphorical Migrations
In the Skin of a Lion’s theme of migration is most prominently embodied in the
characters of Patrick Lewis and Nicholas Temelcoff whose migration experiences
act as a foil for one another. While Temelcoff immigrates to Canada from Macedonia,
Patrick’s move from rural Ontario to Toronto is also presented as an im-