Longlisted for theMan Booker Prize 2018.
In his first novel since The Cat's Table,Michael Ondaatje relates a story of lives built and undone in the closing hours and long aftermath of the Second World War.
'The ending of wars is always kind of a treacherous time... all these deals are being made,contracts are being signed... all those hidden things that go on.'- Michael Ondaatje,Interviewed in The Toronto Star.
In a narrative as mysterious as memory itself - at once both shadowed and luminous - Warlight is a vivid,thrilling novel of violence and love,intrigue and desire.
It is 1945,and London is still reeling from the Blitz and years of war. 14-year-old Nathaniel and his sister,Rachel,are apparently abandoned by their parents,left in the care of an enigmatic figure named The Moth.
They suspect he might be a criminal,and grow both more convinced and less concerned as they get to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women with a shared history,all of whom seem determined now to protect,and educate (in rather unusual ways) Rachel and Nathaniel. But are they really what and who they claim to be
A dozen years later,Nathaniel begins to uncover all he didn't know or understand in that time,and it is this journey - through reality,recollection,and imagination - that is told in this magnificent novel.
Dickensian in its scope and ambition Warlight returns to many of the themes that inhabited Michael Ondaatje's Man Booker Prize-winning novel The English Patient. The result is an intensely affecting novel of memory and fragmented identity set at a pivotal historic moment of flux.
Publisher: Vintage PublishingISBN: 9781784708344Number of pages: 304Weight: 213 gDimensions: 198 x 129 x 19 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'Warlight sucked me in deeper than any novel I can remember... fiction as rich,as beautiful,as melancholy as life itself'- Alex Preston,The Observer
'Ondaatje's first novel in seven years mesmerizes from start to finish... A violent event pivots the narrative into thriller territory,simultaneously revealing an intricate puzzle of a love story.'- Hephzibah Anderson,Mail on Sunday
'The English Patient author Michael Ondaatje weaves another tale of love,loss and memory against a backdrop of World War II. Warlight revolves around the shadowy nature of memory... The mysteries come together through a complex,non-linear narrative that revisits and revises each development with careful scrutiny.'- Lucy Brooks,Culture Whisper
'(Warlight is) so cunningly assembled... leaner than The English Patient and its focus is tighter,a searchlight's focus.'- Anna Mundow,The Washington Post
'Ondaatje (is) such a thrilling writer... I loved (Warlight).'- Johanna Thomas-Corr,Evening Standard
'Skilfully navigating espionage,betrayal and deception,Warlight... takes (Ondaatje) deep into John le Carre territory... a lyrical but sinister mosaic of a hidden world.'- Boyd Tonkin,The Economist
'Warlight is Ondaatje's most haunting novel after The English Patient... mesmerising.'- Nilanjana Roy,Financial Times
'Ondaatje's spare and evocative prose perfectly captures the crumbled austerity of post-war London... this is easily his most satisfying and seductive novel in years'- Richard Strachan,Herald Scotland
Michael Ondaatje
Born in Sri Lanka,author Michael Ondaatje moved to England as a child and then to Canada where he still lives today. A playwright,novelist,poet and author of non-fiction he is best-known for his 1992 novel The English Patient which was the joint winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film of the same name.
Visit the Michael Ondaatje author page
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