 Philip
Michael Ondaatje is a well-known contemporary novelist and poet, born on
September 12, 1943. He is a Sri Lankan born Canadian Citizen. His
origins are from the Colombo Chetty and Burgher community.
He is the winner of the Booker prize for his novel The English
Patient, which was later adapted into a very successful film. Notably,
this novel has won the Canada Australia Prize and the Canadian Governor
General Award; moreover the movie has won the prestigious Academy Award,
for the best picture. Ondaatje received his BA from the University of
Toronto and MA from Queen’s Kingston, Ontario.
He conducted lectures at the University of Western Ontario London and
continues teaching at York University and Glendon College. He created a
narrative style by exploring many interconnected snapshots in minute
detail. His style of fiction is introduced in “Coming through Slaughter”
in 1976 and mastered in The English Patient in 1992.
Although he is best known as a novelist, Ondaatje’s work encompassed
autobiography, poetry and film. He has written a semi-fiction, Running
in the Family, a memoir of his childhood in Sri Lanka.
He has published thirteen books of poetry and won the Governor
General’s Award for two of them, namely The Collected Works of Billy the
Kid in 1970 which was for adapted stage and numerous theatrical
productions across North America and There’s a Trick With a Knife I’m
Learning to Do: Poems 1973-1978 in 1979. Ondaatje’s three films include
a documentary on fellow poet B. P. Nichol, Sons of Captain Poetry and
The Clinton Special: A film about a Farm Show. In 2002, he published a
non-fiction book, The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing
film.
Not only did this win the American Cinema Editors Awards but the
Kraszna-Krausz Book Award for the best book of the year on Moving Image
in 2003. Most of his novels received many places in award ceremonies
including Anil’s Ghost, which received the Giller Prize, the Kiriyama
Pacific Rim Book Prize in 2000 and Irish Times International Fiction
Prize as well as Canada’s Governor General Award in 2001.
In the Skin of a Lion also won Ritz Paris Hemingway Award for the
Best Novel of the Year in English and won the first Canada Reads
competition in 2002. Coming through Slaughter, won the 1976 Books in
Canada First Novel Award. Ondaatje is married to novelist and academic
Linda Spalding and has two children.
- Harshini
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