"Michael Ondaatje" is the first comprehensive and fully up-to-date study of Ondaatje's entire oeuvre. Starting from Ondaatje's beginnings as a poet, this volume offers an intensive account of each of his major publications, including "The Collected Works of Billy the Kid", "Coming Through Slaughter", "In The Skin of a Lion" and "The English Patient", drawing attention to the various contexts and intertexts that have informed his work. The book contains a broad overview of Ondaatje's career for students and readers coming to his work for the first time. It also offers an original reading of his writing which significantly revises conventional accounts of Ondaatje as a postmodern or postcolonial writer. As the fullest account of Ondaatje's work to date, Spinks' approach draws on a range of postcolonial theory and, as well as being a landmark in Ondaatje scholarship, makes a distinctive contribution to debates about postcolonial literature and the poetics of postmodernism.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Series editor's foreword List of abbreviations Chronology 1. Contexts and intertexts 2. The early poems 3. The collected works of Billy the Kid 4. Coming through slaughter 5. Running in the family 6. In the skin of a lion 7. The English patient 8 Anil's ghost 9. Critical overview and conclusion Select bibliography Index

About the Author

Lee Spinks is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Edinburgh