Michael Ondataaje - modern Canadian writer, author of the English Patient
Michael Ondataaje, poet, filmmaker, editor (b at Colombo, Ceylon [Sri Lanka] 12 Sept 1943). Ondaatje's work often blends or counterposes the factual and the imaginary, poetry and prose. His longer narrative works, often based on the unorthodox lives of real people, may contain documentary as well as fictional accounts. Ondaatje's imagery is characterized by its preoccupation with romantic exoticism and multiculturalism; its gravitation towards the bizarre, the exaggerated, and the unlikely; its fascination with the secret codes of violence in both personal and political life; and with its continued delving into the world of movies, jazz and friendship. His work is also notable for its cinematic qualities in its frequent use of montage techniques and spare dramatic dialogue.
Ondaatje immigrated to Canada via England in 1962, and attended the University of Toronto (BA) and Queen's (MA). His first books of poetry include The Dainty Monsters (1967), The Man with Seven Toes (1969) and Rat Jelly (1973). The Collected Works of Billy the Kid , an account of the factual and fictional life of the notorious outlaw, won the Governor General's Award in 1970 and has been adapted for stage and produced at Stratford, Toronto and New York. Coming Through Slaughter (1976) tells of real and imagined events in the life of New Orleans jazz cornetist Buddy Bolden. His collection of poems (1963-78), There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do , won a second Governor General's Award in 1979. Running in the Family (1982) tells of the glamorous and unconventional life of his parents and grandparents in colonial Ceylon. Secular Love , a book of poems, was published in 1984.
In the Skin of a Lion , published in 1987, is a novel which takes place in Toronto in the 1930s. The English Patient (1992) is Ondaatje's most acclaimed novel to date. In addition to winning another Governor General's Award for fiction in 1992, it earned Ondaatje a share of the prestigious Booker Prize, the first ever awarded to a Canadian. Ondaatje's films include Sons of Captain Poetry (about poet bp NICHOL), Carry on Crime and Punishment , The Clinton Special (about Theatre Passe Muraille's Farm Show) and Royal Canadian Hounds . His critical work on Leonard COHEN was published in 1970, and as editor of Mongrel Broadsides he published poems by James REANEY, Margaret ATWOOD and others. He has also edited a collection about animals, The Broken Ark: A Book of Beasts (1971); Personal Fictions: Stories by Munro, Wiebe, Thomas, and Blaise (1977) and The Long Poem Anthology (1979). In 1971 Ondaatje began teaching at York University in Toronto.