From the acclaimed author of The English Patient and In the Skin of a Lion - a stunningly beautiful and moving new novel about a boy's life-changing journey from Ceylon to England in the 1950s.
From the acclaimed author of The English Patient comes a stunningly beautiful novel about a boy's life-changing journey from Ceylon to England in the 1950s.What had there been before such a ship in my life?
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Summary
From the acclaimed author of The English Patient and In the Skin of a Lion - a stunningly beautiful and moving new novel about a boy's life-changing journey from Ceylon to England in the 1950s.
From the acclaimed author of The English Patient comes a stunningly beautiful novel about a boy's life-changing journey from Ceylon to England in the 1950s.What had there been before such a ship in my life?
Description
From the acclaimed author of The English Patient and In the Skin of a Lion- a stunningly beautiful and moving new novel about a boy's life-changing journey from Ceylon to England in the 1950s.From the acclaimed author of The English Patient comes a stunningly beautiful novel about a boy's life-changing journey from Ceylon to England in the 1950s.What had there been before such a ship in my life? A dugout canoe on a river journey? A launch in Trincomalee harbour? There were always fishing boats on our horizon. But I could never imagine the grandeur of this castle that was to cross the sea.In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy boards a huge liner in Colombo bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the lowly 'cat's table' , as far from the Captain's table as can be, with a ragtag group of adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship crosses the Indian Ocean the boys tumble from one adventure to another, and at night they spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and fate a mystery that will haunt them forever...
Critic Reviews
“Extraordinary”
One of the most admirable and enthralling literary novels of the year Daily Mail
Guardian
Superbly poised between the magic of innocence and the melancholy of experience The Economist
Michael Ondaatje's impressive new novel, containing dreams and fantasy between a ship's flanks...is, in the most etymological way, a wonderful novel: one full of wonders -- Philip Hensher Daily Telegraph
Atmospheric, elegiac and at times, like Ondaatje's most famous novel, The English Patient, unbearably poignant -- Sebastian Shakespeare Tatler
I love this book: the boys running wild on the long sea voyage, the slow revelation of the adult world they don't fully understand, the loss of the past and the beginning of the future, and even a sort of thriller in there! And the beauty of the sentences. Perfection -- Salman Rushdie
Wondrous Financial Times
Part memoir, complete masterpiece... Written with tenderness, wisdom and sharp emotional recall, this is an exuberant elegy to innocence -- Maggie Fergusson Intelligent Life
Grave and playful at the same time, beautifully written and moving The Times
It's impossible to explain through any discussion of plot and character the hypnotic brilliance of The Cat's Table. The joy of boyhood and the darkness at its edges are conveyed in sense of imagination... It is entirely...well, Ondaatje-esque -- Kamila Shamsie Guardian, Books of the Year
About the Author
Michael Ondaatje is the author of seven novels; a memoir, Running in the Family; a non-fiction book on film, The Conversations- Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film; and several books of poetry, including The Cinnamon Peeler and Handwriting. The English Patient received the Booker Prize in 1992 and the Golden Man Booker in 2018, and was made into a film directed by Anthony Minghella. Anil's Ghost was awarded the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Giller Prize and the Prix Medicis. Born in Sri Lanka, Michael Ondaatje lives in Toronto.
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