Michael Ondaatje was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and moved to England with his mother in 1954. He attended Dulwich College - Alma Mater of literary luminaries such as P. G. Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler. After relocating to Canada in 1962, Ondaatje became a Canadian citizen. He studied for a time at Bishop's College School and Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec, but moved to Toronto, where he received his BA from the University of Toronto and his MA from Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. He then began teaching at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. In 1970, he settled in Toronto and, from 1971 to 1988, taught English Literature there at York University and Glendon College.
Ondaatje and his wife, novelist and academic Linda Spalding, co-edit
Brick, A Literary Journal, with Michael Redhill, Michael Helm, and Esta Spalding.
His style of fiction was introduced in
Coming Through Slaughter (1976) and mastered in
The English Patient (1992). He creates a narrative by exploring many interconnected snapshots in minute detail.
Although he is best known as a novelist, Ondaatje's work has also includes autobiography, poetry and film. A semi-fictional memoir of his Sri Lankan childhood is called
Running in the Family (1982). He's published thirteen books of poetry, and won the Governor General's Award for two of them:
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 Collected Works of Billy the Kid and
Coming Through Slaughter have been adapted for the stage and produced in numerous theatrical productions across North America. Ondaatje's three films include a documentary on fellow poet B.P. Nichol,
Sons of Captain Poetry, and
A Film About The Farm Show, which chronicles a collaborative theatre experience led in 1971 by Paul Thompson of Theatre Passe Muraille. In 2002, Ondaatje published a non-fiction book,
The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, which won special recognition at the 2003 American Cinema Editors Awards, as well as a Kraszna-Krausz Book Award for best book of the year on the moving image.
Since the 1960s, Onadaatje has been involved with Toronto's influential Coach House Books, supporting the independent small press by working as a poetry editor.
He is well known for five other works of fiction:
- Anil's Ghost ... winner of the 2000 Giller Prize, the Prix Médicis, the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, the 2001 Irish Times International Fiction Prize and Canada's Governor General's Award.
- The English Patient ... winner of the Booker Prize, the Canada Australia Prize, and the Governor General's Award and later made into a motion picture, winning the Academy Award for Best Picture. The English Patient can be considered a sequel to In the Skin of a Lion (1987).
- In the Skin of a Lion ... A fictional story about early immigrant settlers in Toronto, it is the winner of the 1988 City of Toronto Book Award, finalist for the 1987 Ritz Paris Hemingway Award for best novel of the year in English, and winner of the first Canada Reads competition in 2002.
- Coming Through Slaughter ... a fictional story of New Orleans, Louisiana about 1900, very loosely based on the lives of jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden and photographer E. J. Bellocq. Winner of the 1976 Books in Canada First Novel Award
- Divisadero ... Winner of the 2007 Governor General's Award.
In 1988, Ondaatje was made an Officer of the Order of Canada (OC) and two years later a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
He has two children and is the brother of philanthropist, businessman and author Christopher Ondaatje. His nephew David is a film director and screenwriter who made the 2009 film
The Lodger.