While he was researching and writing his third novel, The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje was pretty much free of all expectations for the book except his own. Born in 1943 in Ceylon (which changed its name to Sri Lanka in 1972) and a longtime Canadian resident and citizen, Ondaatje enjoyed a modest following as a poet, filmmaker and educator. But when his novel appeared in 1992, all that comfortable obscurity came to an abrupt halt. The English Patient went on to win Britain's prestigious and commercially influential Booker Prize and was then turned into a 1996 Academy Award-winning film. A lot...
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