The Cat's Table

Description

From the acclaimed author of The English Patient and In the Skin of a Lion- a stunningly beautiful and moving new novel about a boy's life-changing journey from Ceylon to England in the 1950s. From the acclaimed author of The English Patient comes a stunningly beautiful novel about a boy's life-changing journey from Ceylon to England in the 1950s. What had there been before such a ship in my life? A dugout canoe on a river journey? A launch in Trincomalee harbour? There were always fishing boats on our horizon. But I could never imagine the grandeur of this castle that was to cross the sea. In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy boards a huge liner in Colombo bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the lowly 'cat's table' , as far from the Captain's table as can be, with a ragtag group of adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship crosses the Indian Ocean the boys tumble from one adventure to another, and at night they spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and fate a mystery that will haunt them forever...

Michael Ondaatje is the author of several novels, as well as a memoir, a nonfiction book on film, and several books of poetry. Among his many Canadian and international recognitions, his novel The English Patient won the Booker Prize, and was adapted into a multi-award winning Oscar movie; and Anil's Ghost won the Giller Prize, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and the Prix Medicis. Born in Sri Lanka, Michael Ondaatje lives in Toronto.

One of the most admirable and enthralling literary novels of the year * Daily Mail * Extraordinary * Guardian * Superbly poised between the magic of innocence and the melancholy of experience * The Economist * Michael Ondaatje's impressive new novel, containing dreams and fantasy between a ship's flanks...is, in the most etymological way, a wonderful novel: one full of wonders -- Philip Hensher * Daily Telegraph * Atmospheric, elegiac and at times, like Ondaatje's most famous novel, The English Patient, unbearably poignant -- Sebastian Shakespeare * Tatler *