Michael Ondaatje is a Canadian writer and poet of Sri Lankan origin, born in 1943 in Colombo. He is known worldwide for his novel The English Patient (1992), which won the Booker Prize and was adapted into a film.
Michael Ondaatje(1943 — ?)
Michael Ondaatje
Canada
6 min read
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born on 12 September 1943 in Colombo (Ceylon, present-day Sri Lanka)
- Emigrated to Canada in 1962 after studying in England
- Published The English Patient in 1992, winner of the Booker Prize that same year
- The film adaptation of The English Patient (1996) won 9 Oscars
- Received the Golden Man Booker Prize in 2018 for The English Patient
Works & Achievements
A hybrid work blending poetry, prose and images around the American outlaw. It earned him the Governor General's Award and revealed his distinctive style.
His first novel, inspired by the figure of jazz cornet player Buddy Bolden, in New Orleans.
An autobiographical narrative born from his return to Sri Lanka to piece together his family's history.
A novel celebrating the immigrant laborers who built Toronto in the early 20th century.
His most famous novel, winner of the Booker Prize and adapted into a film in 1996. The story of four destinies in Italy at the end of the war.
A novel set during the Sri Lankan civil war, centered on a forensic anthropologist investigating the disappeared.
A coming-of-age novel retracing the ocean-liner voyage of a young boy from Ceylon to England.
A novel of espionage and memory set in post-war London.
Anecdotes
In 1992, Michael Ondaatje won the prestigious Booker Prize for The English Patient. In an exceptionally rare turn of events, he had to share it that year with Barry Unsworth, honoured for Sacred Hunger: unable to choose between them, the jury awarded the prize to two winners at once.
The 1996 film adaptation of The English Patient by Anthony Minghella was a worldwide triumph: the film won nine Oscars in 1997, including Best Picture, thrusting the novel and its author onto the global stage.
Born in Colombo, Ondaatje left Sri Lanka as a child. In 1978, he returned to the island of his childhood to piece together his family's history: that journey gave rise to the memoir Running in the Family, weaving together memories, legends and photographs.
For his very first major book, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970), this Canadian of Sri Lankan origin chose a purely American subject: the famous outlaw of the Wild West. Blending poetry, prose and images, the book earned him Canada's Governor General's Award.
In 2018, for the fiftieth anniversary of the Booker Prize, readers around the world were invited to vote for the best winner in the prize's history: The English Patient came out on top and received the “Golden Man Booker”.
Primary Sources
We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom. We are communal histories, communal books.
A memoir in which Ondaatje returns to Sri Lanka to piece together a portrait of his family: “I wanted to touch with my own hands what, until then, had been only a name, a family rumour.”
A novel set during the Sri Lankan civil war, examining the work of a forensic scientist investigating anonymous victims: “A truth simply meant that you knew all the versions of the story.”
Key Places
Ondaatje's birthplace, on the island then known as Ceylon. The country of his childhood inspired several of his books, including Running in the Family and Anil's Ghost.
Ondaatje continued his schooling here after leaving Ceylon in 1954, notably at Dulwich College. It was a key stage in his journey as a child of the diaspora.
Ondaatje completed his university studies here after arriving in Canada. Canada became his adopted country and the setting for several of his works.
The city where Ondaatje lives and teaches, and which he portrays in In the Skin of a Lion through its immigrant builders. The center of his Canadian literary life.
Typical Objects
Ondaatje composes and reworks his texts by hand at length, accumulating fragments, images and drafts before assembling them. His writing proceeds through collage and successive rewrites.
Like many authors of his generation, Ondaatje moved from the typewriter to the computer to produce clean copies of his manuscripts. The tool serves to fix and structure a text reworked over many years.
Ondaatje's most famous work, awarded the Booker Prize in 1992. The book tells the intertwined fates of four characters in an Italian villa at the end of the Second World War.
To write Running in the Family, Ondaatje draws on old photographs and the memories of relatives in order to reconstruct his Sri Lankan family history. The image becomes a raw material of the narrative.
Ondaatje long co-edited the Canadian magazine Brick, devoted to literature and ideas. This object illustrates his role as a driving force in literary life, beyond his own work.
School Curriculum
Vocabulary & Tags
Key Vocabulary
Tags
Daily Life
Morning
Like many writers, Ondaatje often devotes his mornings to writing, in quiet surroundings. He works at length by hand, crossing out and reworking his sentences before deeming them worthy of being kept.
Afternoon
The afternoon may be dedicated to reading, to documentary research for his historical novels, or to his editorial work for the magazine *Brick*. He also taught literature at a university in Toronto.
Evening
Evenings are well suited to literary gatherings, public readings, and exchanges with other authors. Canadian and international literary life holds an important place in his schedule.
Food
Living in contemporary Canada, Ondaatje has a modern and varied diet, also shaped by his Sri Lankan origins, rich in rice, curries, and spices. No particular constraint applies to his diet.
Clothing
Ondaatje wears the ordinary clothing of a Western intellectual of the late 20th and early 21st centuries: understated, comfortable outfits, with no uniform or ceremonial dress.
Housing
He lives mainly in Canada, notably in Toronto, in a comfortable urban home typical of a contemporary writer. His travels to Sri Lanka and elsewhere regularly nourish his work.
Historical Timeline
Period Vocabulary
Liens externes & ressources
Références
Œuvres
Les Œuvres complètes de Billy the Kid (The Collected Works of Billy the Kid)
1970
Coming Through Slaughter
1976
Un air de famille (Running in the Family)
1982
In the Skin of a Lion
1987
Le Fantôme d'Anil (Anil's Ghost)
2000
La Table des autres (The Cat's Table)
2011
