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Tag Archives: Michael Ondaatje

State of the nation

Thursday, July 9, 2020

Review of Andrew Fidel Fernando’s debut book Upon a Sleepless Isle, which has just won Sri Lanka’s Gratiaen Prize (2019) for English-language literature. — For The Critic

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Andrew Fidel Fernando, Anuradhapura, beards, beer, Booker Prize, children, Colombo, colonialism, cricket, elephants, English, ESPNCricinfo, Gratiaen Prize, humour, Jaffna, John Still, Kandy, LTTE, Minneriya, New Zealand, Nuwara Eliya, Picador India, Polonnaruwa, Shehan Karunatilaka, Sigiriya, Sri Lanka, tea, the British, The Critic, the Victorians, tourism, travel, tuktuks, Uva Rebellion, writers | Comments (0)

Booksheds

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

As Colombo emerges from the Covid lockdown, I go immediately to one of my favourite places. — For The Critic

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged Alfred Douglas, Andre Gide, Arthur C Clarke, bibliomania, books, bookshops, Borges, Ceylon, coconuts, Colombo, colonialism, Covid-19, Craig Raine, Cyril Connolly, David Blacker, David Kugultinov, David Nichol Smith, Dee Brown, Dervla Murphy, Dickens, Edmund Waller, education, EM Forster, English, fauna, Georges Bataille, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Harold Nicolson, Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, Joan Collins, Joseph Conrad, Kalmykia, Lenin, libraries, Lionel Shriver, Louis Mountbatten, Madeleine Albright, Maradana, Nabokov, Peter Ackroyd, Richard Flanagan, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Sinhala, Sri Lanka, Tamil, Teilhard de Chardin, The Critic, the Duke of Pirajno, The New Yorker, Tom Wolfe | Comments (0)

‘It is the living we should fear’

Sunday, March 29, 2020

DISCLAIMER: Ten years ago, I reviewed Shehan Karunatilaka’s debut novel, Chinaman, for this newspaper. It was brilliant, I said, and everyone should buy it. I noted, though, for form’s sake, that I’d done some light proofreading of the manuscript, and hoped that this would not be taken either as cause or symptom of inoperable bias. […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged BBC, children, Colombo, Commonwealth Book Prize, cousins, cricket, death, DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, Elvis Presley, Gratiaen Award, Herodotus, independence, Marlon James, Marxism, Nietzsche, novels, Oscar Wilde, pangolins, Penguin India, photography, Richard de Zoysa, Shehan Karunatilaka, Singlish, Sinhala, Sri Lanka, Sunday Times (SL), The Mahavamsa, The Matrix, war, Wisden | Comments (0)

Did The English Patient send me to Afghanistan?

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Two nights from now, by way of (ahem) a birthday present, I will be attending a live-orchestra screening of The English Patient at the Albert Hall. I had invited an old friend, a raven-haired young lady (named in Debrett’s) of impossibly romantic tendency, who first exposed me to the film in, I’d say, about 1998 […]

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged Academy Awards, Afghanistan, Ahmed Hassanein, air travel, American University in Cairo, anatomy, Anthony Minghella, Arabic, army, Banana Republic, bedouin, Benny Goodman, Booker Prize, books, bookshops, Brighton, Bruce Chatwin, Byron, Canada, Charing Cross Road, Christopher Hitchens, clothing, Debrett's, deserts, Dorset, Egypt, Egyptology, exploration, film, French Foreign Legion, Gabriel Yared, Geoff Dyer, Geographical, Geographical Journal, Herodotus, Hungarian, Hungary, JM Coetzee, John Ball, John Hare, Joseph Conrad, Justin Marozzi, Kensington Gore, Kristen Scott Thomas, László Almásy, London, Long Range Desert Group, Lorenz Hart, love, mountains, music, novels, Orientalism, Oscar Wilde, Oxford, Picador, plums, Ralph Bagnold, Ralph Fiennes, Ranulph Fiennes, Richard Bermann, Robert Twigger, Royal Albert Hall, Royal Geographical Society, Saul Kelly, Sinai, SOE, song, South Africa, the Himalayas, the Nile, The Oldie, the Sahara, the Western Desert, war, WG Sebald, William Golding, wind, women, WW2, YouTube, Zerzura | Comments (0)

M.O.’s m.o. – or; Everybody wants to be like Mike

Thursday, June 7, 2018

A review of Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight. — For The Spectator

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged crime, ethnography, fiction, Florence, geography, intelligence, Libya, London, memory, spies. Aramaic, St Lucia, The Spectator, the Thames, Trieste, writers, writing, WW2 | Comments (0)

Epigraph (after Ondaatje)

Monday, December 1, 2014

K: Am I ‘K’ in your book? A: No.

Filed in Non-fictions | Also tagged (after), biograffiti, micro-non-fiction | Comments (0)

Suffer not

Thursday, December 16, 2010

They were sitting on the floor leaning into the corner of the room, her mouth on his nipple, her hand moving his cock slowly. I sat in the corner of the library, reading Ondaatje, hoping none of the children would see.

Filed in Non-fictions | Also tagged cock, literature, micro-non-fiction | Comments (0)

Drowning in a tsunami of cliché?

Friday, May 7, 2010

The Gratiaen Prize 2009 The Gratiaen Prize – for those of you not up on your South Asian literary gongs – is an annual award given to Sri Lankan writers for creative writing in English, f(o)unded in 1993 by Michael Ondaatje, with his English Patient Booker winnings. Writing-in-English is a small crowd here – ‘here’ […]

Filed in feature, Journalism | Also tagged Gratiaen Prize, Shehan Karunatilaka, Sri Lankan literature | Comments (0)