A YEAR OF LAST THINGS

From the acclaimed Booker Prize-winning novelist, a gorgeous and most of all surprising poetry collection about memory, love, and the act of looking back 'His thrilling poems often read like exquisite, unwritten Ondaatje novels'
Independent on Sunday Following several of his internationally acclaimed, beloved novels, A Year of Last Things is Michael Ondaatje's long-awaited return to poetry. In pieces that are sometimes wittily funny, moving and always wise, we journey back through time by way of alchemical leaps, unearthing writings by revered masters, moments of shared tenderness, and abandoned landscapes we hold onto to rediscover the influence of every border crossed. Moving from a Sri Lankan boarding school to Moliere's chair during his last stage performance, to Bulgarian churches and their icons, to a California coast, and his beloved Canadian rivers, Michael Ondaatje casts a brilliant eye that merges his past and present, in the way memory and the distant shores of art and lost friends continue to influence all that surrounds him. These poems reflect the life of a writer, traveller and watcher of the world who has never conformed to western traditions - always describing himself as a 'mongrel', someone who contains multitudes. Looking back on a life of displacement and discovery, love and loss, this is an intercultural and brave book. Poetry - where language is made to work hardest - is what Ondaatje has returned to, and this is both an intimate personal record of a life lived and a great artist's guide to the vital, various world around us.