Warlight
Michael Ondaatje
McClelland & Stewart
<p><i>A young man journeys back in time - through reality, memory, and imagination - to understand his unusual past.</i></p><p>It is 1945, and London is still reeling from the Blitz. Apparently abandoned by their parents, 14-year-old Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, are left in the care of an enigmatic figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and grow both more convinced and less concerned as they get to know his eccentric crew of friends. They all seem determined to protect and educate Rachel and Nathaniel (in rather unusual ways). But are they really what and who they claim to be?&nbsp;&nbsp;A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all he didn’t know or understand at that time, and it is this journey – through reality, recollection, and imagination – that is told in this magnificent novel.<br></p><p>"<i>...a tender coming-of-age story so warmly delivered you almost forget how much of its plot involves smuggling, spycraft and assassins ... The pleasure of spy novels is their suggestion that smarter and savvier figures are protecting our lives. Ondaatje tweaks the notion, considering Nathaniel’s life in the context of spies falling down on the job ... Ondaatje gets to have it both ways: His elegant prose is a pleasure in its own right and a scrim that Nathaniel layers over his own story, protecting himself against how abandoned he’s been. A love of secrets, for better or for worse, is his inheritance.</i>"&nbsp; -&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Mark Athitakis, The Minneapolis Star Tribune</b></p><p><b>Michael Ondaatje</b>&nbsp;<i>Born in Sri Lanka, Ondaatje is the author of seven novels, a memoir, a non-fiction book on film and several books of poetry.&nbsp; The English Patient won the Booker Prize in 1992 and the Golden Booker in 2018; Anil’s Ghost won the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Giller Prize, and the Prix Médicis. Ondaatje was also shortlisted, for his entire body of work, for The Man Booker International Prize 2007.&nbsp;&nbsp;</i></p>