The eagerly awaited novel by the internationally acclaimed author of The English Patient and Anil’s Ghost.

A new novel by Michael Ondaatje is a major publishing event, and one that defines any publishing season. Divisadero, Ondaatje’s magnificent new novel, is psychologically intricate, visually ravishing, devastating and beautiful. It promises to be his most successful hardcover publication yet.

The spellbinding story begins in the 1970s, in the western U.S. — on a farm in northern California near to what had been Gold Rush country, and then moving into the raucous world of Nevada’s casinos. There is a father; a daughter, Anna; an adopted sister, Claire; and an enigmatic young man named Coop. A traumatic event unexpectedly shatters their makeshift family and sets each of them on a separate course until, years later, the past once again enters their lives. The novel’s breathtaking second part unfolds in the stark landscape of south-central France, where Anna discovers echoes of old memories in the story of a well-known writer, Lucien Segura, who lived at one time in the small, isolated house she occupies — a story that leads back to the early part of the century.

Gorgeously written and with characters who will stay with us for the rest of our lives, Ondaatje’s fourth novel brings together all of the elements for which his fiction is celebrated. In Divisadero, Michael Ondaatje is at the height of his artistic powers.

The clockmaker was not my father, but he raised me. I learned I suppose a manner from him. Also that any trade or talent could be shaped discreetly without the sparks of exaggerated drama. . . . And he loved my mother. I saw him on the last days of his life lift that oil-scented right hand and enter its fingers into her ordered hair and rustle it free of its pins as if he had been offered velvet or the fur of a rare animal. Forever I hold that gesture. For me it was perhaps the last and essential pleasure belonging to him. It is the unspoiled core of whatever I know of love and family (and I have not been successful at the craft of it). Our shyness at embracing each other — it rarely happened — did not matter. I felt safe and comforted in his house. There was a calm, the two clocks in the house were silent but precise and we were safe in time. For just five years he gave us all that.

—From Divisadero

“Ondaatje’s writing is evocative, powerful and deeply intimate. The reader can’t help but care about all of the characters. . . . [who] come to accept the reality of their own lives, and the loss of the ones who meant the most.”

Calgary Herald

“Gorgeous. . . . It’s Ondaatje’s singular achievement to explore the heavy costs and burdens of colliding human lives with a lightness of touch and clarity of vision that makes for dead-run compelling reading.”

National Post

“Emotionally riveting. . . . [Divisadero] delivers his trademark seductive prose, quixotic characters and psychological intricacy.”

Publishers Weekly

“Michael Ondaatje’s prose is breathtaking. . . . Divisadero is his most beautiful [novel]. . . . [A] luminous book by one of our most thoughtful and erudite writers.”

Charlotte Gray, Ottawa Citizen

“Michael Ondaatje is the Canadian William Faulkner, writing novels that are visually unforgettable, stylistically inimitable, utterly devoted to the rise and fall of the human heart . . . . Compelling and moving. . . .”

Vancouver Sun

“Genius (there is no other word for a writer of such grace and depth). Ondaatje’s unique gift is that his stories perform an inexorable seduction, impossible to resist. . . . Divisadero shines with an indisputable and incomparable power. . . . A brilliant sleight of hand.”

Globe and Mail

From the celebrated author of The English Patient and In the Skin of a Lion comes a remarkable new novel of intersecting lives that ranges across continents and time.

In the 1970s in northern California, near Gold Rush country, a father and his teenage daughters, Anna and Claire, work their farm with the help of Coop, an enigmatic young man who makes his home with them. Theirs is a makeshift family, until it is riven by an incident of violence — of both hand and heart — that sets fire to the rest of their lives.

Divisadero takes us from the city of San Francisco to the raucous backrooms of Nevada’s casinos, and eventually to the landscape of south central France. It is here, outside a small rural village, that Anna becomes immersed in the life and the world of a writer from an earlier time — Lucien Segura. His compelling story, which has its beginnings at the turn of the century, circles around “the raw truth” of Anna’s own life, the one she’s left behind but can never truly leave. And as the narrative moves back and forth in time and place, we discover each of the characters managing to find some foothold in a present rough-hewn from the past.

Breathtakingly evoked and with unforgettable characters, Divisadero is a multi-layered novel about passion, loss, and the unshakable past, about the often discordant demands of family, love, and memory. It is Michael Ondaatje’s most intimate and beautiful novel to date.

Michael Ondaatje is the author of the novels In the Skin of a Lion, The English Patient, and Anil’s Ghost. His other books include Running in the Family, Coming Through Slaughter, The Cinnamon Peeler, and Handwriting. He lives in Toronto.