Ondaatje, Michael

Abstract

Michael Ondaatje is a poet and storyteller of extraordinary energy and beauty, and one of Canada's finest writers. Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka, moved to England in 1952, and has lived in Canada since 1962. Ondaatje's career reflects his remarkable ability to juggle literary, editorial, academic, and critical work. Although he is internationally renowned for his novels, particularly the Booker Prize winning novel The English Patient , Ondaatje has also authored many highly celebrated collections of poetry, as well as screenplays and nonfiction books and essays. Ondaatje's writing is fixated by history, memory, and the physicality of human lived experience, and it powerfully forces us to re‐experience the living environments in which we live.