Michael Ondaatje's poetry has become a touchstone in Canadian letters. To readers, his work includes some of the most memorable and moving verse written in the past half-century. To writers, his sensual line and diamond-cut imagery have become a tuning fork and a road map into the world. The Story is another gem, another atlas of intense connections and unavoidable loss.

Like a miniature of Ondaatje's larger themes -- love, memory, family, exile -- The Story unfolds into our dismantled childhoods, and offers us the freedom to extend its narrative into our own lives.

This beautiful, hauntingly illustrated edition of Michael Ondaatje's poem The Story was conceived by Ondaatje and artist David Bolduc as a fundraising project for World Literacy of Canada. All royalties from the sale of this book will go directly to World Literacy to help it continue its literacy work with women and children in India.

Michael Ondaatje (born 12 September 1943) is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian novelist and poet of Colombo Chetty and Burgher origin. He is perhaps best known for his Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient, which was adapted into an Academy-Award-winning film.

He moved to England in 1954, and in 1962 moved to Canada where he has lived ever since. He was educated at the University of Toronto and Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and began teaching at York University in Toronto in 1971. He published a volume of memoir, entitled Running in the Family, in 1983. His collections of poetry include The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left Handed Poems (1981), which won the Canadian Governor General's Award in 1971; The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems (1989); and Handwriting: Poems (1998). His first novel, Coming Through Slaughter (1976), is a fictional portrait of jazz musician Buddy Bolden. The English Patient (1992), set in Italy at the end of the Second World War, was joint winner of the Booker Prize for Fiction and was made into an Academy Award-winning film in 1996. Anil's Ghost (2000), set in Sri Lanka, tells The Story of a young female anthropologist investigating war crimes for an international human rights group.

Michael Ondaatje lives in Toronto with his wife, Linda Spalding, with whom he edits the literary journal Brick. His new novel is Divisadero (2007).

Michael Ondaatje's profile page

David Bolduc has done drawings for a number of publications, including David Rosenberg's Paris & London and Leavin' America, Wayne Clifford's An Ache in the Ear, Roy Kiyooka's December/February '87 '88, and Victor Colemanâ??s Parking Lots for Greg Curnoe. Bolduc is a regular contributor of drawings to Brick.

David Bolduc's profile page