Michael Ondaatje · Lablypedia

Ondaatje's literary career began with his poetry: in 1967 he published The Dainty Monsters, and in 1970 the critically acclaimed The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. His novel The English Patient (1992), adapted as a film in 1996, received the Booker Prize in 1992. It later won the Golden Man Booker Prize as the best of the first 51 Booker Prize winners.

Ondaatje has been "fostering new Canadian writing" with two decades' commitment to Coach House Press (ca. 1970–1990), where he edited, among other authors, Daphne Marrlatt's early poems. His editorial credits include the journal Brick, and the Long Poem Anthology (1979), among others.

Early life and education

Ondaatje was born in Colombo, Ceylon (today's Sri Lanka), in 1943, to Major Mervyn Ondaatje and Doris Gratiaen of Tamil and Burgher (Dutch and Sinhalese) descent. His parents later separated. In 1954, he re-joined his mother in England. where he attended Dulwich College.

He emigrated to Montreal, Quebec, in 1962, and studied at Bishop's College School and Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec, for three years. He attended the University of Toronto receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1965, followed by a Master of Arts from Queen's University at Kingston.

The poet D. G. Jones noted his poetic ability.

Ondaatje began teaching English at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. In 1971, he taught English literature at Glendon College, York University.

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Work

Ondaatje has published 13 books of poetry, and won the Governor General's Award for The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970) and There's a Trick With a Knife I'm Learning to Do: Poems 1963–1978 (1979). Anil's Ghost (2000) was the winner of the 2000 Giller Prize, the Prix Médicis, the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, the 2001 Irish Times International Fiction Prize and Canada's Governor General's Award.

The English Patient (1992) won the Booker Prize, the Canada Australia Prize, and the Governor General's Award. It was adapted as a motion picture, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and multiple other awards.

In the Skin of a Lion (1987), a novel about early immigrants in Toronto, was the winner of the 1988 City of Toronto Book Award, finalist for the 1987 Ritz Paris Hemingway Award for best novel of the year in English, and winner of the first Canada Reads competition in 2002. Coming Through Slaughter (1976), is a novel set in New Orleans, Louisiana, circa 1900, loosely based on the lives of jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden and photographer E. J. Bellocq. It was the winner of the 1976 Books in Canada First Novel Award. Running in the Family (1982) is a childhood memoir.

Ondaatje's novel Divisadero won the 2007 Governor General's Award. In 2011 Ondaatje worked with Daniel Brooks to create a play based on this novel.

In 2018, his novel Warlight was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Adaptations

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Coming Through Slaughter and Divisadero have been adapted for the stage and produced in theatrical productions across North America and Europe. In addition to The English Patient adaptation, Ondaatje's films include a documentary on poet B.P. Nichol, Sons of Captain Poetry, and The Clinton Special: A Film About The Farm Show, which chronicles a collaborative theatre experience led in 1971 by Paul Thompson of Theatre Passe Muraille.

In 2002, Ondaatje published a non-fiction book, The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, which won special recognition at the 2003 American Cinema Editors Awards, as well as a Kraszna-Krausz Book Award for best book of the year on the moving image.

Honours

In 1988, Ondaatje was made an Officer of the Order of Canada which was later upgraded to grade of Companion in 2016, the highest level of the order and two years later a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In 2005, he received Sri Lanka Rathna, the highest honour given by the Government of Sri Lanka for foreign nationals.

In 2008, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2012.

In 2016, a new species of spider, Brignolia ondaatjei, discovered in Sri Lanka, was named after him.

Public stand

In April 2015, Ondaatje was one of several members of PEN American Center who withdrew as literary host when the organization gave its annual Freedom of Expression Courage award to Charlie Hebdo. The award came in the wake of the shooting attack on the magazine's Paris offices in January 2015. Ondaatje, along with 60 other writers, signed a letter to PEN expressing concern that the award valorized "selectively offensive material: material that intensifies the anti-Islamic, anti-Maghreb, anti-Arab sentiments already prevalent in the Western world."

Personal life

Since the 1960s, Ondaatje has been a poetry editor for Toronto's Coach House Books. Ondaatje and his wife, Linda Spalding, a novelist and academic, co-edit Brick, A Literary Journal, with Michael Redhill, Michael Helm, and Esta Spalding. Ondaatje served as a founding member of the board of trustees of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry from 2000 to 2018. He established the Gratiaen Trust in Sri Lanka that annually awards the Gratiaen Prize.

Ondaatje has two children with his first wife, Canadian artist Kim Ondaatje. His brother Sir Christopher Ondaatje was a philanthropist, businessman and author. Ondaatje's nephew David Ondaatje is a film director and screenwriter, who made the 2009 film The Lodger.

Books

Novels

1976: Coming Through Slaughter (also see "Other" section, 1980, below), Toronto: Anansi, ISBN 0-393-08765-4; New York: W. W. Norton, 1977
1987: In the Skin of a Lion, New York: Knopf, ISBN 0-394-56363-8, ISBN 0-14-011309-6
1992: The English Patient, New York: Knopf, ISBN 0-679-41678-1, ISBN 0-679-74520-3
2000: Anil's Ghost, New York: Knopf, ISBN 0-375-41053-8
2007: Divisadero, ISBN 0-307-26635-4 ISBN 9780307266354
2011: The Cat's Table, ISBN 978-0-7710-6864-5, ISBN 0-7710-6864-6
2018: Warlight, ISBN 077107378X, ISBN 978-0771073786

Poetry collections

1962: Social Call, The Love Story, In Search of Happiness, all featured in The Mitre: Lennoxville: Bishop University Press
1967: The Dainty Monsters, Toronto: Coach House Press
1969: The Man with Seven Toes, Toronto: Coach House Press
1970: The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-Handed Poems (also see "Other" section, 1973, below), Toronto: Anansi ISBN 0-88784-018-3; New York: Berkeley, 1975
1973: Rat Jelly, Toronto: Coach House Press
1978: Elimination Dance/La danse eliminatoire, Ilderton: Nairn Coldstream; revised edition, Brick, 1980
1979: There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do: Poems, 1963–1978, New York: W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 1979 ISBN 0-393-01191-7, ISBN 0-393-01200-X
- published as Rat Jelly, and Other Poems, 1963–1978, London, United Kingdom: Marion Boyars, 1980
1984: Secular Love, Toronto: Coach House Press, ISBN 0-88910-288-0, ISBN 0-393-01991-8 ; New York: W. W. Norton, 1985
1986: All along the Mazinaw: Two Poems (broadside), Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Woodland Pattern
1986: Two Poems, Woodland Pattern, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
1989: The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems, London, United Kingdom: Pan; New York: Knopf, 1991
1998: Handwriting, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart; New York: Knopf, 1999 ISBN 0-375-40559-3
2006: The Story, Toronto: House of Anansi, ISBN 0-88784-194-5
2024: A Year of Last Things, London: Jonathan Cape, ISBN 9781787335035

Editor

1971: The Broken Ark, animal verse; Ottawa: Oberon; revised as A Book of Beasts, 1979 ISBN 0-88750-050-1
1977: Personal Fictions: Stories by Munro, Wiebe, Thomas, and Blaise, Toronto: Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-540277-4
1979: A Book of Beasts, animal verse; Ottawa: Oberon; revision of The Broken Ark, 1971
1979: The Long Poem Anthology, Toronto: Coach House ISBN 0-88910-177-9
1989: With Russell Banks and David Young, Brushes with Greatness: An Anthology of Chance Encounters with Greatness, Toronto: Coach House, 1989
1989: Edited with Linda Spalding, The Brick Anthology, illustrated by David Bolduc, Toronto: Coach House Press
1990: From Ink Lake: An Anthology of Canadian Short Stories; New York: Viking ISBN 0-394-28138-1
1990: The Faber Book of Contemporary Canadian Short Stories; London, United Kingdom: Faber
2000: Edited with Michael Redhill, Esta Spalding and Linda Spalding, Lost Classics, Toronto: Knopf Canada ISBN 0-676-97299-3; New York: Anchor, 2001
2002: Edited and wrote introduction, Mavis Gallant, Paris Stories, New York: New York Review Books

Other

1966: The Offering - co-producer and co-screenwriter
1970: Leonard Cohen (literary criticism), Toronto: McClelland & Stewart
1973: The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (play; based on his poetry; see "Poetry" section, 1970, above), produced in Stratford, Ontario; produced in New York, 1974; produced in London, England, 1984
1979: Claude Glass (literary criticism), Toronto: Coach House Press
1980: Coming through Slaughter (play based on his novel; see "Novels" section, 1976, above), first produced in Toronto
1982: Running in the Family, memoir, New York: W. W. Norton, ISBN 0-393-01637-4, ISBN 0-7710-6884-0
1982: Tin Roof, British Columbia, Canada: Island, ISBN 0-919479-10-3, ISBN 0-919479-93-6
1987: In the Skin of a Lion (based on his novel), New York: Knopf
1994: Edited with B. P. Nichol and George Bowering, An H in the Heart: A Reader, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart
1996: Wrote introduction, Anthony Minghella, adaptor, The English Patient: A Screenplay, New York: Hyperion Miramax
2002: The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, New York: Knopf, ISBN 0-676-97474-0
2002: Films by Michael Ondaatje
2004: Vintage Ondaatje, ISBN 1-4000-7744-3