Kip, for example is clearly a very positive character, yet we (I) do not feel the affection for him that one might expect. The author, in his third person persona, keeps quite a distance from his characters, and the reader is held at arm’s length. It is a wonderful book, but is not without its flaws. This may be one of those rare instances in which the film exceeds the book. Michael Ondaatje in 1999 - image from NY Times The English Patient is one of my scriptures.ĭon't even talk to me about the travesty that is the film. To feel a book in other ways as I read it and hear it is as near as I come to a holy experience. I could feel the words filling my lungs, or burning my throat, or passing through my airways in different manners, so that saying the words on the page, those already sensual words, made the sensuality tangible for me. Actually rolling those words and worlds around on my tongue, wheezing my way through the English Patient's tale, letting Kip's Lahore English spill over my teeth, adopting Carravagio's voice as my own, and trying my best to capture Hana for myself (I have the benefit of being mostly Canadian and not having to adjust my accent for the latter two) broadened the sensuality of the book, and not just because the sounds were resounding in my head. This time through I decided to read it out loud, and a whole new sensuality exploded into the experience for me. This remains one of my three favourite novels because of its poeticism, fragmentation and sensuality. It is too poetic for the mainstream, too fragmented for easy consumption, and too sensual for those who consider plot the most important part of a novel. I marvel that this was ever read by more than a thousand people. In 1992 he received the Man Booker Prize for his winning novel adapted into an Academy-Award-winning film, The English Patient. He has two children and is the brother of philanthropist, businessman, and author Christopher Ondaatje. In 1988 Michael Ondaatje was made an Officer of the Order of Canada (OC) and two years later became a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Ondaatje has, since the 1960s, also been involved with Toronto's influential Coach House Books, supporting the independent small press by working as a poetry editor. He and his wife, novelist and academic Linda Spalding, co-edit Brick, A Literary Journal, with Michael Redhill, Michael Helm, and Esta Spalding.Īlthough he is best known as a novelist, Ondaatje's work also encompasses memoir, poetry, and film.
From 1971 to 1988 he taught English Literature at York University and Glendon College in Toronto. Ondaatje studied for a time at Bishops College School and Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec, but moved to Toronto and received his BA from the University of Toronto and his MA from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario and began teaching at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. After relocating to Canada in 1962, Ondaatje became a Canadian citizen. He moved to England with his mother in 1954. He was born to a Burgher family of Dutch-Tamil-Sinhalese-Portuguese origin.
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