Michael Ondaatje
Photo: Writing BarHis most recent novel, The Cat's Table, has been getting a lot of attention. It was reviewed by The New Yorker in May, The Guardian and The Independent in August and The Telegraph in September. Three days ago, Nick Owchar gave author and book a positive review in the LA Times as it moved to Number 1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list.
Michael Ondaatje was born in Colombo and lived in England before coming to Canada. He was educated in Toronto and Kingston and began publishing poetry in the seventies, winning his first of several Governor General's Award for the collection There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do in 1971. In 1982 he published a memoir, Running in the Family, after a trip back to Sri Lanka (still called Ceylon when he left.)
The English Patient (1992) was a lyrical novel that garnered huge attention and won the Man Booker Prize. In 1996, it was made into a blockbuster movie directed by Anthony Minghella and starring Juliette Binoche, Kristin Scott Thomas and Ralph Fiennes.
An earlier novel, In the Skin of a Lion (1987) is an exciting portrayal of Canada in the 1920s and 1930s. It won three Canadian literary awards, and on a personal note, I used it with several classes. The paper back version has the distinction of being one of the only novels I thumbed through so much that I literally wore it out. Even though I got a new one, I couldn't bring myself to throw away the original, which is still on the shelf in my office, held together by an elastic band.
The author has also published two other novels called Anil's Ghost (2000) and Divisadero (2007) and a variety of other work. According to the British Council Literature website, Ondaatje is "one of Canada's most important contemporary writers and one of the country's biggest cultural exports."
Ondaatje is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.