Michael Ondaatje: Quotes, Life and Work, Books, Further Reading, and a List of Books by Author Michael Ondaatje

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"It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself." -- Michael Ondaatje

Philip Michael Ondaatje, OC () (born 12 September 1943) is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian novelist and poet of Colombo Chetty and Burgher origin. He is perhaps best known for his Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient, which was adapted into an Academy-Award-winning film.

Quotes more less

"A writer uses a pen instead of a scalpel or blow torch.""As a writer, one is busy with archaeology.""I don't have a plan for a story when I sit down to write. I would get quite bored carrying it out.""I don't see novels ending with any real sense of closure.""I see the poem or the novel ending with an open door.""I tend not to know what the plot is or the story is or even the theme. Those things come later, for me.""I'm a Canadian citizen. But I always want to feel at home in Sri Lanka. I'm a member of both countries.""In the book the relationship with Katharine and Almasy is sort of only in the patient's mind.""It doubles your perception, to write from the point of view of someone you're not.""It's a discovery of a story when I write a book, a case of inching ahead on each page and discovering what's beyond in the darkness, beyond where you're writing.""It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow.""It's an odd state to be in, blowing the whistle on your home country.""Once I've discovered the story, I might restructure it, maybe move things around, set up a clue that something is going to happen later, but that happens much later in an editorial capacity.""Research can be a big clunker. It's difficult to know how you can make the historical light.""Right now, I have no idea what I will write or if I will write again.""That's Anil's path. She grows up in Sri Lanka, goes and gets educated abroad, and through fate or chance gets brought back by the Human Rights Commission to investigate war crimes.""The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human. Meander if you want to get to town.""The last three books are much more a case of a moment of history, what happened almost by accident or coincidence, like being in the same elevator or lifeboat.""The past is still, for us, a place that is not safely settled.""To write about someone like myself would be very limiting.""Truth, at the wrong time, can be dangerous.""When you're writing, it's as if you're within a kind of closed world.""You don't want to write your own opinion, you don't want to just represent yourself, but represent yourself through someone else.""You want to suggest something new, but at the same time, resolve the drama of the action in the novel.""You're getting everyone's point of view at the same time, which, for me, is the perfect state for a novel: a cubist state, the cubist novel."

Life and Work more less

Books more less

Novels

1976: Coming Through Slaughter (also see "Other" section, 1980, below), Toronto: Anansi ISBN 0393087654 ; New York: W. W. Norton, 1977
1987: In the Skin of a Lion, New York: Knopf, ISBN 0394563638, ISBN 0140113096
1992: The English Patient, New York: Knopf, ISBN 0679416781, ISBN 0679745203
2000: Anil's Ghost, New York: Knopf, ISBN 0375410538
2007: Divisadero, ISBN 0307266354 ISBN 9780307266354

Poetry

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 0887840183 ; 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 0393011917, ISBN 039302100X

published as Rat Jelly, and Other Poems, 1963-1978, London, United Kingdom: Marion Boyars, 1980

1984: Secular Love, Toronto: Coach House Press, ISBN 0889102880, ISBN 0393019918 ; New York: W. W. Norton, 1985
1986: All along the Mazinaw: Two Poems (broadside), Milwaukie, Wisconsin: Woodland Pattern
1986: Two Poems, Woodland Pattern, Milwaukie, 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 0375405593
2006: The Story, Toronto: House of Anansi, ISBN 0887841945

Editor

1971: The Broken Ark, animal verse; Ottawa: Oberon; revised as A Book of Beasts, 1979 ISBN 0887500501
1977: Personal Fictions: Stories by Munro, Wiebe, Thomas, and Blaise, Toronto: Oxford University Press ISBN 0195402774

1979: A Book of Beasts, animal verse; Ottawa: Oberon; revision of The Broken Ark, 1971

1979: The Long Poem Anthology, Toronto: Coach House ISBN 0889101779

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 0394281381

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

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 0393016374, ISBN 0771068840
1982: Tin Roof, British Columbia, Canada: Island, ISBN 0919479103, ISBN 0919479936
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 0676974740
2004: Vintage Ondaatje, ISBN 1400077443