Michael Ondaatje

Personal

Born Philip Michael Ondaatje, December 9, 1943, in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka); immigrated to Canada, 1962; son of Philip Mervyn (a tea and rubber plantation superintendent) and Enid Doris Gratiaen (a dance and theatre school administrator) Ondaatje; married Kim Jones (divorced); married Linda Spalding; children: (first marriage) Quintin (daughter), Griffin (son). Education: Graduated Dulwich College, London, 1962; attended Bishop's University (Lennoxville, Quebec, Canada), 1962-64; University of Toronto, B.A. (English literature), 1965; Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada), M.A. Hobbies and other interests: Hound breeding, hog breeding.

Addresses

Officem— Department of English, Glendon College, York University, 2275 Bayview Ave., Toronto, Ontario M4N 3M6, Canada. Agentm— Steven Barclay Agency, 12 Western Ave., Petaluma, CA 94952.

Career

University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, instructor, 1967-71; Glendon College, York University, Toronto, Ontario, member of English faculty, beginning 1970, currently professor; Coach House Press, Toronto, editor, 1970-94; Mongrel Broadsides, editor; Brick (literary journal), editor. Visiting professor, University of Hawaii at Honolulu, 1979, and Brown University, 1990. Director of films, including Sons of Captain Poetry, 1970, Carry on Crime and Punishment, 1972, Royal Canadian Hounds, 1973, The Clinton Special, 1974, and Inventor of Dragland Hog Feeder, 1975.

Awards, Honors

Ralph Gustafson Award, 1965; Epstein Award, 1966; E. J. Pratt Medal, 1966; President's Medal, University of Western Ontario, 1967; Canada Council grant, 1968, 1977; Canadian Governor General's Award for Literature, 1971, for The Collected Poems of Billy the Kid, 1980, for There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do, 1992, for The English Patient, and 2000, for Anil's Ghost; Books in Canada First Novel Award, 1977, for Coming through Slaughter; Canadian Governor General's Award for Poetry, 1979; Canada-Australia Prize, 1980; Toronto Book Award, 1988; Booker Prize, British Book Trust, 1992, for The English Patient; Literary Lion Award, New York Public Library, 1993; Giller Prize and Prix Medicis, both 2000, and Irish Times Literature Prize shortlist, 2001, all for Anil's Ghost; Robert Wise Award, American Cinema Editors, 2003, for The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film.

Writings

POETRY

The Dainty Monsters, Coach House Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1967.

The Man with Seven Toes, Coach House Press (Tor-onto, Ontario, Canada), 1969.

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-handed Poems (also see below), Anansi (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1970, Berkley (New York, NY), 1975.

Rat Jelly, Coach House Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1973.

Elimination Dance, Nairn Coldstream (Ilderton, Ontario, Canada), 1978, revised edition, Brick, 1980.

There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do: Poems, 1963-1978, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 1979, published as Rat Jelly, and Other Poems, 1963-1978, Marion Boyars (London, England), 1980.

Secular Love, Coach House Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1984, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 1985.

All along the Mazinaw: Two Poems (broadside), Woodland Pattern (Milwaukee, WI), 1986.

Two Poems, Woodland Pattern (Milwaukee, WI), 1986.

The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems, Pan (London, England), 1989, Knopf (New York, NY), 1991.

Handwriting, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1998, Knopf (New York, NY), 1999.

The Story, House of Anansi (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2005.

NOVELS

Coming through Slaughter (also see below), Anans (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1976, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 1977.

In the Skin of a Lion (also see below), Knopf (New York, NY), 1987.

The English Patient, Knopf (New York, NY), 1992.

Anil's Ghost, Knopf (New York, NY), 2000.

EDITOR

The Broken Ark (verse), illustrated by Tony Urquhart, Oberon (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada), 1971, revised edition published as A Book of Beasts, 1979.

Personal Fictions: Stories by Munro, Wiebe, Thomas, and Blaise, Oxford University Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1977.

The Long Poem Anthology, Coach House Press (Tor-onto, Ontario, Canada), 1979.

(With Russell Banks and David Young) Brushes with Greatness: An Anthology of Chance Encounters with Greatness, Coach House Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1989.

(With Linda Spalding) The Brick Anthology, illustrated by David Bolduc, Coach House Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1989.

From Ink Lake: An Anthology of Canadian Short Stories, Viking (New York, NY), 1990.

The Faber Book of Contemporary Canadian Short Stories, Faber (London, England), 1990.

(With others) Lost Classics, Knopf Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2000, Anchor (New York, NY), 2001.

(And author of introduction) Mavis Gallant, Paris Stories, New York Review Books (New York, NY), 2002.

OTHER

Leonard Cohen (literary criticism), McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1970.

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (play; based on his poetry), produced in Stratford, Ontario, 1973; produced in New York, NY, 1974; produced in London, England, 1984.

Claude Glass (literary criticism), Coach House Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1979.

Coming through Slaughter (based on his novel), produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1980.

Tin Roof, Island (British Columbia, Canada), 1982.

Running in the Family (memoir), W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 1982.

In the Skin of a Lion (based on his novel), Knopf (New York, NY), 1987.

(With B. P. Nichol and George Bowering) An H in the Heart: A Reader, McClelland & Stewart (Tor-onto, Ontario, Canada), 1994.

(Author of introduction) The English Patient: A Screenplay (based on his novel), adapted by Anthony Minghella, Hyperion Miramax (New York, NY), 1996.

The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, Knopf (New York, NY), 2002.

Vintage Ondaatje, Vintage Books (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to books, including The Story So Far, volume one, edited by George Bowering, Coach House Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1971, and Tasks of Passion: Dennis Lee at Midcareer, edited by Karen Mulhallen, Descant Editions (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1982. Contributor to periodicals, including Canadian Literature, Descant, and Periodics.

Ondaatje's manuscripts are included in the National Archives, Ottawa, Canada, and the Metropolitan Toronto Library.

Adaptations

The English Patient was adapted as a motion picture, written and directed by Anthony Minghella, produced by Miramax, 1996; Anil's Ghost was adapted as an audiobook read by Alan Cummings, Random House AudioBooks, 2000.

Sidelights

A poet and novelist whose ability to find unusual resonance in old stories and telling subtleties in the recollections of friends and family, as well as his own impressions of living between two cultures, Ceylon-born Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje mines the inner lives of his multigenerational characters and focuses on the extraordinary in human nature. The dynamics of family life, the violence of war, and the loss of cultural identity in a postcolonial world all find their way into his fiction, which includes the award-winning novels The English Patient, Anil's Ghost, and Coming through Slaughter. "Concerned always to focus on the human, the private, and the 'real' over the theoretical and the ideological," in his novels and short fiction "Ondaatje examines the internal workings of characters who struggle against and burst through that which renders people passive," noted Diane Watson in Contemporary Novelists.

While Ontaatje's prose fiction reflects his talents as a poet, much of his poetry contains elements of narrative, and many of his verses are a patchwork of poetry, fiction, myth, memoir, and travelogue, sometimes enhanced by photographic images that echo the poet's words. "Moving in and out of imagined landscape, portrait and documentary, anecdote or legend, Ondaatje writes for the eye and the ear simultaneously," noted Diane Wakoski in Contemporary Poets. Sharply etched details and sensuous imagery are characteristic of Ondaatje's often-whimsical prose, as are startling juxtapositions anda preoccupation with personal experiences that resonate within his characters.

Moving between Two Worlds

Born in Colombo, Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), in 1943, Ondaatje's grandfather was a wealthy man who owned a family estate in Kegalle and grew tea. In 1952, four years after his parents divorced, Ondaatje moved to London with his mother, brother, and sister, and at age nineteen he immigrated to Montreal, Canada, to join his brother. From 1962 to 1964, Ondaatje studied English and history at Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec. At college, under the tutelage of professor Arthur Motyer, who "aroused an enthusiasm for literature," according to Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Ann Mandel, Ondaatje first began to write creatively. His study of the works of Robert Browning, T. S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, and the younger modern poets, was augmented by meeting contemporary Canadian poets such as D. G. Jones and Raymod Souster; the latter included Ondaatje's award-winning early writings in his anthology of young Canadian poets, New Wave Canada.

In 1964 Ondaatje married Kim Jones, an artist (the couple had two children before separating in 1980), and left Bishop's University to transfer to the University of Toronto to complete his bachelor's degree.In 1965 Ondaatje entered Queen's University, graduating two years later with a master's degree based on a thesis on Scots poet Edwin Muir. That same year, he published The Dainty Monsters, his first volume of poetry.

Ondaatje's poetry is seen by critics as continually changing, evolving as the author experiments with the shape and sound of words. Although his poetic forms may differ, his works focus on the myths that root deep in common cultural experience. As New York Times Book Review contributor Adam Kirsch explained, the poems in Handwriting are "richly sensual images, which are drawn largely from the history, mythology, and landscape of India and China. "As a poet, he recreates their intellectual expression in depicting the affinity between the art of legend and the world at large. "He cares more about the relationship between art and nature than any other poet since the Romantics," stated Liz Rosenberg in New York Times Book Review, "and more than most contemporary poets care about any ideas at all. "Some of Ondaatje's verse has approached the fragmentary, as in Secular Love, a collection of poems he published in 1985. More recent works, such as Handwriting, utilize the poet's characteristic fragmentary style. As Henry Taylor noted in Poetry, "once one has become accustomed to it, " Ondaatje's "style is singularly appropriate to the themes and subjects of the book, which arise from mixed heritage and the loss of cultural identity." Library Journal reviewer Barbara Hoffert called Ondaatje's poetry "deeply evocative and suffusedm—but never overburdenedm—with sensuous imagery."

From Poetry to Fiction

While his poetry has been praised by reviewers, Ondaatje is better known to readers in North America as a novelist. Beginning to work in prose after joining the English faculty at Toronto's Glen-don College, he has since alternated between prose and poetry. His first work of long fiction, Coming through Slaughter, was published in 1977, coming on the heels of its author's fourth published poetry collection. In the novel, grounded in the history of early twentieth-century New Orleans, Ondaatje recounts a possible life of Buddy Bolden, a jazz musician who is remembered as a brilliant cornetist. Bolden's life and work remains a tantalizing mystery within the jazz world; his performances were never recorded due to a tragic mental collapse at an early age. Mixing the comments of those who remember Bolden with historical fact, and the author's richly imagined transcription of the musician's inner thoughts during his descent into madness, Ondaatje fashions what Watson termed a "fractured narrative" that traces the creative individual's "personal anarchy."

In the Skin of a Lion, Ondaatje's second novel, focuses on a man raised in rural Canada who, at the age of twenty-one, moves to Toronto and lives among the immigrants inhabiting that city's growing and bustling working-class neighborhoods. In this work the author presents an historical epoch as more than a reaction to changing technology and events; instead, it embodies the struggle of the individual to break free of the confines of his culture. As Michael Hulse described the novel in his review for the Times Literary Supplement, In the Skin of a Lion "maps high society and the sub culture of the underprivileged in Toronto in the 1920s and 1930s. . . . But it is also . . . about communication, about men 'utterly alone' who are waiting (in Ondaatje's terms) to break through a chrysalis."

Pens The English Patient

Perhaps Ontaadje's best known novel, The English Patient tells the story of a Canadian nurse who stays behind in the bombed remains of a villa near the World War II battlefields of northern Italy to tend to an English soldier who has been severely burned and cannot be transported. After the pair are joined by two other soldiers, relationships form that parallel, as Cressida Connolly noted in the Spectator, "those of a small and faded Eden." "In part, The English Patient consists of the stories of its four pilgrims, told by themselves or by the author," observed Richard Eder in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Eder continued, "None of the stories stand alone, however. Their counterpoint and the tensely shifting relationships of the characters provide the book's texture. It is a complex and delicate web whose shimmer and sway is set off by the four lives that alight and are caught in it." Ranking the author among such contemporary British novelists as Ian McEwan and Martin Amis, Connolly praised the poetic quality of Ondaatje's fiction. "The writing is so heady that you have to keep putting the book down between passages so as not to reel from the sheer force and beauty of it," the reviewer exclaimed, adding that "when I finished the book I felt as dazed as if I'd just awoken from a powerful dream."

From the Italian countryside, Ondaatje moves readers to the jungles of Sri Lanka in Anil's Ghost. Set in the present day, the novel documents a nearly twenty-year military conflict that began in the 1980s and resulted in the deaths and disappearances of nearly 20,000 individuals. Anil is a native of Sri Lanka who studied medicine abroad, specializing inforensic pathology, and she has come home as part of a group assigned to examine the remains of victims to determine if their deaths were related to war crimes. Assisted by Sarath, a government-selected archaeologist, Anil discovers four skeletons that she and Sarath name Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, and Sailor, the last of which Anil feels will provide the evidence they are seeking. "This narrow examination broadens to involve the wider conflict as Sri Lanka's history and present achieve a simultaneous, terrible maturity," wrote Rebecca J. Davies in Lancet. "The earth is oily with wasted blood. Severed heads sitatop stakes. Drivers are crucified on the roadside. Bodies succumb to frail fractures sustained in their dive from helicopters. Even babies and three-year-olds are not immune to the bullets. And yet amid this bloody chaos Ondaatje pains takingly captures the normality of interrupted lives." As America contributor John Breslin, Anil's Ghost "ends with three pages of acknowledgments to dozens of doctors, lawyers, civil rights workers, Asian scholars, and fellow poets, plus a bibliography that would make any researcher proud. A lot of homework and leg-work have gone into this novel."

Like The English Patient, Anil's Ghost was the recipient of a number of literary awards. Adding her voice to the inevitable comparison between the two novels that took place, New York Times Book Review contributor Janet Maslin wrote that the more recent work "is a novel more in name than in essence."

The author "brings an oblique poetic sensibility to unraveling the mysteries at work here . . . and assorted vignettes and memories scatter . . . across the book's fertile landscape." The book's true power, Maslin added, is the novel's "profound sense of outrage, the shimmering intensity of its descriptive language and the mysterious beauty of its geography."

Interests Lead to Nonfiction

In addition to poetry and fiction, Ondaatje's interest in filmmaking, fueled perhaps by his involvement in the film adaptation of his novel The English Patient, inspired the nonfiction work The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Film Editing. Highly praised by reviewers, The Conversations examines Murch's life and career as a three-time Oscar winner and collaborator with noted directors Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas in Zoetrope Studios. The creative process is also discussed, as writer and film editor talk about the task of revealing hidden themes and patterns in existing creative works. As Ondaatje noted in an interview with a Maclean's contributor, editingm—whether of film orone's written work, is "the only place where you're on your own. Where you can be one person and govern it. The only time you control making a movie is in the editing stage." In Booklist Carlos Orellana praised The Conversations for permitting "readers a peek behind the curtain to reveal a man as mysterious as his art," while in Publishers Weekly a reviewer noted: "Through [Murch's] . . . eyes, and Ondaatje's remarkably insightful questions and comments, readers see how intricate the process is, and understand Murch when he says, 'The editor is the only one who has time to deal with the whole jigsaw. The director simply doesn't.'"

Running in the Family, a heartfelt memoir honoring the author's family and his heritage, blends together family stories with poems, photographs, and personal

If you enjoy the works of Michael Ondaatje

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anecdotes. As his family history follows a path leading from the genteel innocence of the Ceylonese privileged class as the sun set on the British Empire to the harsh glare of the modern age, so Ondaatje's narrative seeks the inner character of his father, a man of whom the author writes, "My loss was that I never spoke to him as an adult." As Anton Mueller in the Washington Post Book World wrote, "In reality, this is a mythology exaggerated and edited by the survivors. Seduced by the wealth and luxury of its imaginative reality, Ondaatje enters the myth without disturbing it. With a prose style equal tothe voluptuousness of his subject and a sense of humor never too far away, Running in the Family is sheer reading pleasure."

Acclaimed alongside authors such as Alice Munro, Robertson Davies, and Margaret Atwood as one of Canada's literary giants, Ondaatje continues to be lauded by critics and beloved by readers for his ability to create a unique voice and break with the rules of established literary conventions yet create a body of work that is accessible and evocative. His use of mythical and historical allusions have also been praised, and his ability to revisit the past in order to shed a fresh light on the present has gained him the respect of many traditionalists. According to Mandel, writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Ondaatje "is clearly an original writer," whose "importance lies . . . in his ability to combine a private, highly charged, sometimes dark vision with witty linguistic leaps and welcoming humor."

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Barbour, Douglas, Michael Ondaatje, Twayne Publishers (New York, NY), 1993.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 14, 1980, Volume 29, 1984, Volume 51, 1989, Volume 76, 1993.

Contemporary Novelists, 7th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Contemporary Poets, 7th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Cooke, John, The Influence of Painting on Five Canadian Writers: Alice Munro, Hugh Hood, Timothy Findley, Margaret Atwood, and Michael Ondaatje, Edwin Mellen (Lewiston, NY), 1996.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 60: Canadian Writers since 1960, Second Series, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1987.

Jewinski, Ed, Michael Ondaatje: Express Yourself Beautifully, ECW Press, 1994.

Mundwiler, Leslie, Michael Ondaatje: Word, Image, Imagination, Talonbooks (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1984.

Ondaatje, Michael, Running in the Family (memoir), W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 1982.

Pearce, Jon, editor, Twelve Voices: Interviews with Canadian Poets, Borealis (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada), 1980.

Siemerling, Winfried, Discoveries of the Other: Alterity in the Work of Leonard Cohn, Hubert Aquin, Michael Ondaatje, and Nicole Brossard, University of Toronto (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1994.

Solecki, Sam, editor, Spider Blues: Essays on Michael Ondaatje, Vehicule Press, 1985.

Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven, Comparative Cultural Studies and Michael Ondaatje's Writing, Purdue University Press (West Lafayette, IN), 2005.

PERIODICALS

America, February 19, 2001, John Breslin, "War on Several Fronts," p. 25.

American Book Review, March, 1999, review of The Cinnamon Peeler, p. 23.

Ariel, April, 1997, Josef Pesch, "Post-Apocalyptic War Histories: Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, " p. 117.

Back Stage, February 17, 2005, Ben Rock, review of The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, p. S12.

Booklist, March 1, 1999, Donna Seaman, review of Handwriting, p. 1145; March 15, 2000, Bonnie Smothers, review of Anil's Ghost, p. 1294; September 15, 2002, Carlos Orellana, review of The Conversations, p. 192.

Canadian Forum, January-February, 1993, p. 39.

Canadian Literature, spring, 2002, Douglas Barbour, "Writing through Terror," pp. 187-188; winter, 2004, Brenda Austin-Smith, "Film and Form," pp. 94-96.

Christian Science Monitor, May 4, 2000, "An Island Paradise in the Flames of Terror," p. 17.

Economist, June 17, 2000, review of Anil's Ghost, p. 14.

English Studies, May, 1996, p. 266.

Entertainment Weekly, September 13, 2002, review of The Conversations, p. 148.

Essays on Canadian Writing, summer, 1994, pp. 1, 11, 27, 204, 238, 250; fall, 1995, p. 236; winter, 1995, p. 116; spring, 1999, review of The English Patient, p. 236; spring, 2002.

Harper's, February, 2003, John Gregory Dunne, "Guys Who Worked on the Movie," review of The conversations, p. 69.

History and Theory, December, 2002, p. 43.

Hudson Review, spring, 2001, Alan Davis, review of Anil's Ghost, p. 142.

Journal of Canadian Studies, summer, 2001, Dennis Duffy, "Furnishing the Pictures: Arthur S. Goss, Michael Ondaatje, and the Imag(in)ing of Toronto," p. 106.

Journal of Modern Literature, summer, 2000, William H. New, review of Anil's Ghost, p. 565.

Lancet, January 20, 2001, Rebecca J. Davies, "A Tale of the Sri Lankan Civil War," p. 241.

Library Journal, April 15, 1999, Barbara Hoffert, review of Handwriting, p. 100; May 15, 2000, Barbara Hoffert, review of Anil's Ghost, p. 126; June 1, 2001, Ron Ratliff, review of Lost Classics, p. 160.

Los Angeles Times, May 21, 2000, Jonathan Levi, review of Anil's Ghost, p. C1.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 11, 1992, Richard Eder, "Circles on a Pond," pp. 3, 12.

Maclean's, April 10, 2000, John Bemrose, "Horror in Paradise: Michael Ondaatje Sifts through Sri Lanka's Strife," p. 78; December 18, 2000, p. 66; September 9, 2002, "A Sort of Improvisation Happens," p. 40; November 11, 2002, review of The Conversations, p. 89.

Modern Language Review, January, 1997, p. 149.

Mosaic, September, 1999, Douglas Malcolm, "Solos and Chorus: Michael Ondaatje's Jazz Politics/Poetics," p. 131.

Nation, January 4, 1993, p. 22; June 19, 2000, Tom LeClair, "The Sri Lankan Patients," p. 31.

National Catholic Reporter, November 19, 1993, p. 30.

New Criterion, May, 2000, Brooke Allen, "Meditations, Good & Bad," p. 63.

New Leader, May, 2000, Tova Reich, review of Anil's Ghost, p. 37.

New Republic, March 15, 1993, p. 38.

New Statesman, March 19, 1999, Lavinia Greenlaw, review of Handwriting, p. 48.

Newsweek, January 27, 2003, review of The Conversations, p. 70.

New Yorker, May 15, 2000, John Updike, review of Anil's Ghost, p. 91.

New York Review of Books, January 14, 1993, p. 22; November 2, 2000, John Bayley, review of Anil's Ghost, p. 44.

New York Times Book Review, April 24, 1977; December 22, 1985, pp. 22-23; April 11, 1999, Adam Kirsch, "Erotic, Exotic," p. 24; May 11, 2000, Janet Maslin, "Unearthing the Tragedies of Civil War in Sri Lanka"; May 14, 2000, Richard Eder, "A House Divided."

Poetry, May, 2000, Henry Taylor, review of Handwriting, p. 96.

Prairie Schooner, spring, 2001, Constance Merritt, review of Handwriting, p. 182.

Publishers Weekly, February 22, 1999, review of Handwriting, p. 88; March 20, 2000, review of Anil's Ghost, p. 70; July 3, 2000, review of Anil's Ghost, p. 24; August 12, 2002, review of The Conversations, p. 290.

Saturday Night, July, 1968; June, 1997, Valerie Feldner, review of The English Patient, p. 12.

School Library Journal, September, 2000, Pam Johnson, review of Anil's Ghost, p. 258.

Spectator, September 5, 1992, Cressida Connolly, review of The English Patient, p. 32; April 29, 2000, John de Falbe, review of Anil's Ghost, p. 29.

Studies in Canadian Literature (annual), 2001, pp. 71-90.

Time, May 1, 2000, Paul Gray, "Nailed Palms and the Eyes of Gods: Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost Is a Stark Successor to The English Patient, " p. 75.

Times Higher Education Supplement, Roger Crittenden, review of The Conversations, p. 27.

Times Literary Supplement, September 4, 1987, p. 948; November 3, 1989, p. 1217; October 19, 1990, p. 1130; September 22, 1992, p. 23; February 5, 1999, Michael O'Neill, review of Handwriting, p. 33.

University of Toronto Quarterly, spring, 2001, p. 633;fall, 2001, p. 889.

Virginia Quarterly Review, summer, 1999, review of Handwriting, p. 102.

Wall Street Journal, April 2, 1999, review of Handwriting, p. 6; May 12, 2000, Elizabeth Bukowski, review of Anil's Ghost, p. W8.

Washington Post Book World, January 2, 1983, pp. 9, 13; November 1, 1987, p. 4.

World Literature Today, spring, 1999, Sen Sudeep, review of Handwriting, p. 333.

ONLINE

BookPage.com, http://www.bookpage.com/ (May, 2000), Ellen Kanner, "New Discoveries from the Author of The English Patient."

Powells.com, http://www.powells.com/ (May 23, 2000), Dave Weich, interview with Ondaatje.

Salon.com, http://www.salon.com/ (November, 1996), Gary Kamiya, "Delirious in a Different Kind of Way" (interview with Ondaatje); (April 25, 2000), Gary Kamiya, "Painting the Eyes of a God."*