Ondaatje, c/o mauitime
Michael Ondaatje is a Canadian writer of fiction, biography, poetry and film, of Sri Lankan origin (b. 1943), who at the age of 11 left his land of birth in 1954, migrating first to England and then to Quebec, Canada (in 1962) where he became a resident. Ondaatje is globally renowned as a writer of fiction and poetry and has been active in literature and film from 1967 to the present. His notable early work includes Collected Work of Billy the Kid (1970), Coming Through Slaughter (1976) and In the Skin of a Lion (1987). Ondaatje also published several works that relate to Sri Lanka, the country of his birth, such as Running in the Family (1982), Anil’s Ghost (1999) and Cat’s Table (2010).
The high point of Ondaatje’s career as a writer in terms of recognition is arguably his winning the Booker Prize in 1992 for The English Patient (1992). Using this prize money Ondaatje set up a fund in memory of his mother Doris Gratiaen – the Gratiaen Trust – which manages an annual prize awarded to the best work of literature in English by a resident Sri Lankan writer. To date, the Gratiaen Prize operates as the most prestigious literary prize in Sri Lanka.
Ondaatje’s work – specially, those that relate to Sri Lanka – are often critiqued by resident readers and critics for their exotic embellishments, abnormalities and hiatuses caused by the writer’s dislocation from the site of narration. This position often undermines Ondaatje’s writing which, at another level, is rich with a pleasant style of lyrical prose. His early work leading up to Running in the Family often suggest a radical, experimental vein – specially, in terms of structure and form – while his later work settle down to a relatively conformist, mainstream approach. Running in the Family and Anil’s Ghost have been variously prescribed in curricula in Sri Lanka as texts in undergraduate and postgraduate courses.
Ondaatje is also a published poet, the more powerful of his work being Rat Jelly (1973), The Cinnamon Peeler’s Wife (1989) and Handwriting (1998).
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