With A Year of Last Things, acclaimed novelist Michael Ondaatje returns to poetry, looking back on a life of displacement and discovery
''My life always stops for a new book by him'' JHUMPA LAHIRI
''A generous, moving book'' GUARDIAN
Born in Sri Lanka during the Second World War, Ondaatje was sent as a child to school in London, and later moved to Canada. While he has lived there since, these poems reflect the life of a writer, traveller and watcher of the world - describing himself as a ''mongrel'', someone born out of diverse cultures.
Here, rediscovering the influence of every border crossed, he moves back and forth in time, from a childhood in Sri Lanka to Moli--s chair during his last stage performance, from icons in Bulgarian churches to the Californian coast and loved Canadian rivers, merging memory with the present, looking back on a life of displacement and discovery, love and loss. As he writes in the opening poem:
