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Ondaatje, Sri Lanka, Family
On this day in 1943 Michael Ondaatje was born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Ondaatje left Ceylon at the age of eleven, for England and then Canada. Much of his earliest work couldn't have been more Western in topic or setting -- Billy the Kid, jazz, Toronto -- but both his novel, Anil's Ghost and his poetry collection, Handwriting are set in Sri Lanka. So too is Running in the Family, the 1982 memoir based on two trips back home in the late '70s. As Ondaatje is of Dutch-Indian ancestry, raised in London, living in Toronto since the age of nineteen, so this book is a blend of forms -- poetry, verbatim tape recordings from family members, reconstructions, journal entries, etc ... FULL STORY »http://www.todayinliterature.com