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Interviews | November 19, 2009

Dave: IMG Finding John Irving: The Powells.com Interview

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[Editor's note: The following is a reprint of our 2005 interview with John Irving, whose new novel, Last Night in Twisted River, has just come out... Continue »
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In the Skin of a Lion

by Michael Ondaatje

In the Skin of a Lion Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

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.

Review:

"Splendidly evocative and entertaining." The Toronto Star

Review:

"Beautiful — I urge you to read this book." The New York Times

Review:

"A triumph — a powerful and revelatory accomplishment." The Times Literary Supplement

Synopsis:

Bristling with intelligence and shimmering with romance, this novel tests the boundary between history and myth. Patrick Lewis arrives in Toronto in the 1920s and earns his living searching for a vanished millionaire and tunneling beneath Lake Ontario. In the course of his adventures, Patrick's life intersects with those of characters who reappear in Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning The English Patient. 256 pp.

From the Hardcover edition.

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About the Author

Michael Ondaatje is the author of three previous novels, a memoir and eleven books of poetry. His novel The English Patient won the Booker Prize. Born in Sri Lanka, he moved to Canada in 1962 and now lives in Toronto.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Andrew Daily, May 10, 2007 (view all comments by Andrew Daily)
Ondaatje's "The English Patient", winner of the Booker Prize and adapted into a wildly popular (and unfairly melodramatic) movie, is his best known and most popular novel. Those who have come to love his prose, however, almost always point to "In the Skin of a Lion" as his greatest work.

It is in this book that we first meet Hannah, Hannah's father Patrick (only alluded to, in death, in "English Patient") and the thief Caravaggio. In spare, poetic prose, Ondaatje traces Patrick from his boyhood in a rural lumber camp through his life, loves, and eventual fatherhood in Toronto's immigrant community of the interwar period. In the process, through Patrick's loves, friends, job, and eventual desperate act, Ondaatje also weaves the story of Toronto's rise as a city, the joys and pains of its multi-ethnic working classes, and its history of radical politics.

"In the Skin of a Lion" is Ondaatje's finest book, and forms a pair with "The English Patient." It in truth lends "EP" a greater resonance and depth, filling in some of the allusions and passions that go unexplained in the latter novel.

It is my suspicion that Ondaatje won the Booker on the strength of this novel, and that the award to "EP" was to make up for the previous slight.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780679772668
Author:
Ondaatje, Michael
Publisher:
Vintage Books USA
Location:
New York :
Subject:
General
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
Toronto (ont.)
Subject:
Love stories
Subject:
Poor
Subject:
Toronto
Subject:
Toronto (Ont.) Fiction.
Edition Description:
Vintage Intl
Series Volume:
3715
Publication Date:
January 1997
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
256
Dimensions:
8.09x5.27x.57 in. .46 lbs.
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