Narrative
Running in the Family
Michael Ondaatje · 1982
Synopsis
The author returns to Ceylon in 1978 and then in 1980, nearly twenty-five years after leaving the island at the age of eleven. He travels there with his sister Gillian and has his aunts, his half-sisters and his father's old friends tell him about the previous generation: Mervyn Ondaatje, an officer and heavy drinker, who used to hijack trains; his grandmother Lalla, swept away by the flood of 1947; the gilded youth of the twenties, caught up in gambling, drink and affairs. The book assembles these accounts in fragments, poems and photographs.
Context
The book appeared in 1982 in Toronto, from McClelland and Stewart, and the same year in New York, from Norton. Critics describe it as fictionalised memoirs, mixing fact, fiction, poems and family photographs. The French translation by Marie-Odile Fortier-Masek appeared from Éditions de l'Olivier in 1991 under the title Un air de famille, and the Spanish translation by Isabel Ferrer, Cosas de familia, from Destino.
Who it is for
About two hundred pages, in short chapters that mix narratives, poems and photographs; it lends itself to being read in fragments.
Prizes and reception
Translated into French, then reissued in paperback by Seuil in the Points series; also translated into Spanish in Barcelona.
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