Synopses & Reviews
In the late 1970s Ondaatje returned to his native island of Sri Lanka. As he records his journey through the drug-like heat and intoxicating fragrances of that "pendant off the ear of India, " Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family. An inspired travel narrative and family memoir by an exceptional writer.
Review
"Brightly coloured, sweet and painful, bloody-minded and otherworldly, [Running in the Family] achieves the status of legend." Margaret Atwood
Review
"Eloquent, oblique, witty, full of light and feeling. Ondaatje's knowledge of the fragility and luck of life is very clear. So, too, is the grace and originality of his prose." The New Yorker
Review
"With a prose style equal to the voluptuousness of [Ondaatjes] subject and a sense of humor never too far away, Running in the Family is sheer reading pleasure." Washington Post
Review
"[T]he brilliant and moving book he has written is original in every way that matters." W. S. Merwin
Review
"Ondaatje has produced a remarkable book....Shimmering through the haze of heat and memory is an impressionistic, sometimes surreal portrait of an exotic time and place now gone, a colonial paradise that had its own rhythms and imperatives." Globe and Mail
About the Author
Michael Ondaatje is the author of three previous novels, a memoir and eleven books of poetry. His novel The English Patient won the Booker Prize. Born in Sri Lanka, he moved to Canada in 1962 and now lives in Toronto.