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 Molière’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:

Reading the lines he loves
he slips them into a pocket,
wishes to die with his clothes
full of torn-free stanzas
and the telephone numbers
of his children in far cities

Poetry – where language is made to work hardest and burns with a gem-like flame - is what Ondaatje has returned to in this intimate history.

"After a break of nearly 20 years, Ondaatje has returned to poetry, ruminating on sliding doors moments in life… This is a generous, moving book" - Guardian

"Extraordinarily attuned to hauntings… Ondaatje is a connoisseur – and creator – of atmospheres… Wonderful" - Observer, *Poetry Book of the Month*

"Dazzling...This collection radiates the joy of a fully realized, literary life" - Publishers Weekly

"A Year of Last Things contains moments of great skill… Ondaatje has a special knack for sensation and for conveying the feeling of something inexorably being taken away" - Times Literary Supplement