UK Wedding Insurance In the Skin of a Lion Author: Michael Ondaatje Trade Paperback Usually ships in 24 hours Delivery is subject to warehouse availability. Shipping delays may occur if we receive more orders than stock. Our Price: $19.95 Our Sale Price: $13.96 Savings: $5.99 (30%) Ordering is 100% secure . Spend $39 or more at chapters.indigo.ca and your order ships free!. ( Details ) Dimensions: 256 Pages | Canadian Author | ISBN: 0394281829 Published: June 1996 | Published by Vintage Canada Our customers who bought this item also bought: A Fine Balance: Oprah's Book Club No. 44 (1997) Book ~ Rohinton Mistry Fall on Your Knees (1998) Book ~ Ann-Marie MacDonald Unless (2002) Book ~ Carol Shields Mercy Among the Children (2001) Book ~ David Adams Richards Family Matters (2002) Book ~ Rohinton Mistry chapters.indigo Review They were anarchists, millionaires, construction workers and clergy. One helped build the Bloor Street Viaduct. Another, a thief, led a charmed life. Still another was rescued from certain death. They created Toronto and the city shaped them. Michael Ondaatje combines adventure and romance, history and murder in a masterful tale of the immigrant experience. From the Publisher In the Skin of a Lion is a love story and an irresistible mystery set in the turbulent, muscular new world of Toronto in the 20s and 30s. Michael Ondaatje entwines adventure, romance and history, real and invented, enmeshing us in the lives of the immigrants who built the city and those who dreamed it into being: the politically powerful, the anarchists, bridge builders and tunnellers, a vanished millionaire and his mistress, a rescued nun and a thief who leads a charmed life. This is a haunting tale of passion, privilege and biting physical labour, of men and women moved by compassion and driven by the power of dreams -- sometimes even to murder. About the Author Author of eleven books of poetry, four novels and a fictionalized memoir, Michael Ondaatje was born in 1943 in Colombo, capital of the British colony of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Of Tamil, Sinhalese and Dutch descent, he was the youngest of four children. He grew up during the halcyon days of colonial Ceylon on the Kutapitiya tea estate, “the most beautiful place in the world,” as he described in an interview with The Guardian . His mother’s real gift to Michael was her enthusiasm for the arts. Of his father, who served in the Ceylon light infantry, Ondaatje has said: “My father was in tea and alcohol; he dealt in tea and he drank the alcohol.” He died of a brain hemorrhage after Michael had left Sri Lanka, so Michael never got to know his father as an adult. “He is still one of those books we long to read whose pages remain uncut. He was a sad and mercurial figure. There was a lot I didn’t know about him … In all my books there are mysteries that are not fully told.” When Michael was five his parents separated. His mother soon went to England with two of her children; Michael stayed behind and lived with relatives, joining his mother and siblings at the age of eleven. He relinquished his sarong and donned a tie – an item of clothing he’d never seen before – to attend Dulwich College, whose alumni include writers Graham Swift, P. G. Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler. (One of Michael’s former teachers expressed surprise when Ondaatje won the Booker, since he had “always seemed more interested in cricket.”) In 1962, at the age of nineteen, he went to Quebec, where his brother Christopher (today a businessman and explorer) was living. It was in Canada that Michael Ondaatje’s writing life began in earnest: “[Y]ou felt you could do anything. I wouldn’t have been a writer if I’d stayed in England … where you feel, what right do you have to do this because of John Donne and Sir Philip Sidney. England felt repressive in the fifties … Moving, you learn twice as much; it doubles you in some way, like living three or four lives.” Ondaatje obtained a B.A. from the University of Toronto and an M.A. from Queen’s University, then taught at the University of Western Ontario and at York University. In the seventies he edited poetry, produced anthologies and critical works and short documentary films, and began his involvement with the small press Coach House. Although he was thrust onto the world stage by the tremendous success of The English Patient , Ondaatje, who lives in Toronto, remains an intensely private person. “Privacy is essential,” he says. “I’ve seen a lot of writers being interpreted by their personalities – Ginsberg, Layton …You want the book to be read, not the author.” When he won the Booker Prize in 1992, he used the money to inaugurate the Gratiaen award – named after his mother – as an annual literary prize for Sri Lankan writers. In his writing Ondaatje employs a technique of blurring fact and fiction in an imaginative collage. His longer narrative works, often based on the unorthodox lives of real people, contain fact alongside fiction. For example, in Coming Through Slaughter he relates the real and imagined life of New Orleans jazz musician Buddy Bolden; in Running in the Family , he writes a fictionalized memoir of the unconventional life of his parents and grandparents in colonial Ceylon. Some of Ondaatje’s major influences come from Henri Rousseau paintings, Diego Rivera murals, Sri Lankan temple sculpture and, most of all, the music and rhythms of jazz. “If I could be Fats Waller, I wouldn’t be writing.” Review Quotes "A triumph -- a powerful and revelatory accomplishment." -- The Times Literary Supplement "Splendidly evocative and entertaining." -- The Toronto Star "A brilliantly imaginative blend of history, lore, passion and poetry." -- Russell Banks "What is most moving is the human connectedness of this book… so densly erotic, so subtly sensual, so intensely responsive." -- Malahat Review "Ondaatje has written into the vivid life of fiction a part of the history of the building of Toronto as no official history would have conceived it and as no official history can now erase it." -- Adele Wiseman " In the Skin of a Lion is an act of magic!" -- Alberto Manguel Reader Reviews Average Reader Review: Number of Reviews: 6 1. A literary eye opener and sure page turner Reviewer: Leo Buijs from Victoria Date: 10/12/2002 3:06:49 PM Great story and plot with interesting characters. However I would not say this reflects what 'shaped Toronto'. There must be more to that, than crazy tunnel diggers and thiefs. Still a great story for a movie, just how long will it take before someone will pick it up? 2. Disappointing Reviewer: Ed from Guelph Date: 6/21/2002 3:57:24 PM I gave up half way through hoping I'd discover where he was going with this. I had been hoping for a readable story about interesting characters out of Toronto's history, but got a too-desperate attempt at avant-garde literature. Why does an author have to feel that in order for his work to be considered a piece of literature, it has to be told in a disjointed stream of semi-conscious? 3. in the skin of a lion Reviewer: elefteria from t.o (greekgodess@hotmail.com) Date: 1/14/2002 3:19:25 PM An excellent story with an enjoyable plot. The effortless detail and poetry throughout the book gives the reader a sense of reflection. One of my favourite books to date. The epic of GIlgamesh is a great way to understand the underlying notion Ondaatje leads us to 4. Excellent characters Reviewer: Andrew Parker from Oakville, Ontario Date: 11/23/2000 10:04:57 PM This book kept me interested throughout, simply because the character stories were so intricately connected with the plot that it was hard to put it down. It all comes together at the end, and makes for a great read. 5. Better than The English Patient Reviewer: Tara from BC Date: 3/20/2000 1:52:04 AM After watching the English Patient, I bought the book, but I couldn't seem to get into it. Somehow, I persevered and even though I was turned off by EP, I bought In the Skin of the Lion. ISL is a wonderful story about the making of a city. The writing is poetic, and the characters are unforgettable. It's one of those books that you still think about days after reading it. 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