Warlight (Ondaatje)

Warlight 
Michael Ondaatje, 2018
Knopf Doubleday
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525521198


Summary
A mesmerizing new novel that tells a dramatic story set in the decade after World War II through the lives of a small group of unexpected characters and two teenagers whose lives are indelibly shaped by their unwitting involvement.

In a narrative as beguiling and mysterious as memory itself—shadowed and luminous at once—we read the story of fourteen-year-old Nathaniel, and his older sister, Rachel.

In 1945, just after World War II, they stay behind in London when their parents move to Singapore, leaving them in the care of a mysterious figure named The Moth.

They suspect he might be a criminal, and they grow both more convinced and less concerned as they come to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women joined by a shared history of unspecified service during the war, all of whom seem, in some way, determined now to protect, and educate (in rather unusual ways) Rachel and Nathaniel.

But are they really what and who they claim to be? And what does it mean when the siblings' mother returns after months of silence without their father, explaining nothing, excusing nothing?

A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all that he didn't know and understand in that time, and it is this journey—through facts, recollection, and imagination—that he narrates in this masterwork from one of the great writers of our time. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—September 12, 1943
• Where—Colombo, Sri Lanka
• Education—B.A. University of Toronto; M.A., Queens University (Canada)
• Awards—Man Booker Prize (more below)
• Currently—lives in Toronto, Canada

Philip Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, novelist, editor and filmmaker. He is the recipient of multiple literary awards, including the Booker Prize. Ondaatje is also an Officer of the Order of Canada, recognizing him as one of Canada's most renowned living authors. He is perhaps best known for his internationally successful novel The English Patient (1992).

Early life and education
Ondaatje was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), and is of Dutch, Sinhalese, and Tamil ancestry. His parents separated when he was an infant, and he lived with relatives until 1954 when he joined his mother in England.

After completing his secondary education at Dulwich College, Ondaatje emigrated to Montreal, Canada, in 1962. There he studied at Bishop's University, switching to the University of Toronto in his final year where he received a BA degree in 1965. Two years later, he received an MA from Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario.

After his formal schooling, Ondaatje began teaching English at the University of Western Ontario. In 1971, reluctant to get his Ph.D, he left his position at Western Ontario and went on to teach English literature at Glendon College, York University.

Writing
Ondaatje's work includes fiction, autobiography, poetry and film. His literary career began with poetry in 1967 and since then has published 13 books of poetry, two of which won Canada's Governor General's Award—The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970) and There's a Trick With a Knife I'm Learning to Do: Poems 1973–1978 (1979).

The author's first novel, Coming Through the Slaughter, debuted in 1976 and was followed over the years by seven others, including a partially fictionalized memoir (Running in the Family). Three of his works (Billy the Kid collection, Coming Through the Slaughter, and Divisadero) were adapted to the stage, and The English Patient became an internationally acclaimed film in 1996, winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, as well as for other categories.

In addition to his literary writing, Ondaatje has been an important force in helping to foster Canadian writing with two decades commitment to Coach House Press (around 1970-90), and his editorial credits on Canadian literary projects like the journal Brick, and the Long Poem Anthology (1979), among others. He has also served on the board of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry since 2000.

Public stand
In April 2015, Ondaatje was one of several members of PEN American Center who withdrew as literary host when the organization gave its annual Freedom of Expression Courage award to Charlie Hebdo. The award came in the wake of the shooting attack on the magazine's Paris offices in January, 2015. Ondaatje and several other hosts felt that while the attack on the office of Charlie Hebdo was reprehensible, the magazine's history of deliberately anti-Islam provocation was not worthy of being honored.

Honors
♦ Divisadero (2007) - Governor General's Award.
♦ Anil's Ghost (2000) - Giller Prize, Prix Medicis, Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, Irish Times International Fiction Prize, Governor General's Award.
♦ The English Patient (1992) - Booker Prize, Canada Australia Prize, Governor General's Award. 
♦ In the Skin of a Lion (1987) - City of Toronto Book Award, the first "Canada Reads" competition, and Ritz Paris Hemingway Award (a finalist)
♦ Coming Through Slaughter (1976) - Books in Canada-First Novel Award

In 1988, Ondaatje was made an Officer of the Order of Canada (OC). In 2000 he became a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Sri Lanka honored Ondaatje in 2005 with its highest award for a foreign national. In 2016 a new species of spider, Brignolia ondaatjei, discovered in Sri Lanka, was named after him.

Personal
Ondaatje has two children with his first wife, Canadian artist Kim Ondaatje. His brother Christopher Ondaatje is a philanthropist, businessman and author. Ondaatje's nephew David Ondaatje is a film director and screenwriter, who made the 2009 film The Lodger. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/17/2018.)

Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [H]aunting, brilliant.… Mesmerizing from the first sentence, rife with poignant insights and satisfying subplots, this novel about secrets and loss may be Ondaatje's best work yet.
Publishers Weekly


Through archival recordings and interviews with the eccentric characters from his childhood, a mosaic slowly emerges that illuminates not only his mother's story but the forgotten lives buried under the history of war. —Joshua Finnell, Colgate Univ., Hamilton, NY
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Ondaatje’s gorgeous, spellbinding prose is precise and lustrous, witty, and tender.… [His] drolly charming, stealthily sorrowful tale casts subtle light on secret skirmishes and wounds sustained as war is slowly forged into peace.
Booklist


(Starred review.) [A] lyrical mystery that plays out in the shadow of World War II.… Ondaatje's shrewd character study plays out in a smart, sophisticated drama, one worth the long wait for fans of wartime intrigue.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for WARLIGHT … then take off on your own:

1. One of the quandaries at the heart of Michael Ondaatje's novel is reconciling Rose Williams's bravery, indeed her patriotic heroism, and her treatment of Nathaniel and Rachel. How do readers, and especially her (fictional) children, wrap their heads around this inconsistency? How are we to consider Rose?

2. What do you make of Moth and Darter? As Nathaniel, in the opening lines, puts it, "our parents left us in the care of two men who may have been criminals."

3. Consider this passage from the novel and how it might be said to sum up one of the story's central concerns:

We never know more than the surface of any relationship after a certain stage, just as those layers of chalk, built from the efforts of infinitesimal creatures, work in almost limitless time.

4. Warlight's structure is anything but linear as it shifts back and forth in time and point of view. Is it confusing? Might the structure be a reflection of Nathaniel's own confusion: his sense of being able to see reality only dimly—as if through "warlight"?

5. Follow-up to Question 4: What are your thoughts on the second section of the novel with its sudden switch from to the third-person perspective? Did you find it difficult to integrate this outside voice into the overall narration?

6. "The lost sequence in a life, they say, is the thing we always search out," Nathaniel tells us. How has that "lost sequence" of Nathaniel's life shaped who he is? When he and Rachel discover that the reason their mother gave for leaving them was not the true reason, how did her lie make them feel? What lasting repercussions does her untruthfulness leave?

7. What does Nathaniel resolve within himself by the novel's end—what understanding has he come to? Or are things left unresolved for him—and for us? Is there a satisfactory resolution at the conclusion?

(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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