Michael Ondaatje

Ondaatje was born in Colombo, in what was then Ceylon, into a Dutch, Sinhalese, and Tamil Burgher family whose eccentric history (including an alcoholic father) he later reconstructed in the memoir Running in the Family. He moved to England at eleven and then to Canada in his early twenties, settling in Toronto, where he has taught at York University for decades.

He made his name first as a poet before The English Patient won the Booker Prize in 1992, shared that year with Barry Unsworth. The novel's fragmented structure, moving between an Italian villa and the North African desert campaign, reflected his background as a poet working prose by image and association rather than linear plot.

In 2018, judges named The English Patient the single best winner of the Booker Prize's first fifty years, the so-called Golden Man Booker.