Michael Ondaatje: The ‘Prodigal-Foreigner’, Reconstruction, and Transnational Boundaries

Abstract

With these scathing words, Arun Mukherjee and Tom LeClair nail their critical colours to the mast: Running in the Family, Michael Ondaatje’s quasi-autobiographical travel narrative about the history of the Ondaatjes in Sri Lanka, and Anil’s Ghost, his novel set during the island’s war-ravaged recent past, are both political and ethical disappointments. For these critics, Ondaatje is a Canadian Sri Lankan author, whose engagement with ‘his native land’ is that of a holidaying foreign visitor who refuses to get too involved, ‘observing victims, [but] avoiding political analysis’. Although he ‘com[es] from a Third World country with a colonial past’, they believe he fails to engage with this history, and Canada is the country to which he ‘retreats’: LeClair’s use of a military metaphor indicates a certain combativeness, suggesting Ondaatje must withdraw to Canada after an attack from Sri Lanka. Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka, left at age 11, was educated in England, and is now a Canadian citizen — in their opinion, Ondaatje’s writing about Sri Lanka says more about his adopted ‘Western’ position than the ‘Third World [...] colonial past’ of his Sri Lankan identity. Also, they believe this Sri Lankan history is inadequately presented; if we accept Benedict Anderson’s assertion that history is ‘the necessary basis of the national narrative’ (Anderson, 1986, 659), then Ondaatje has relinquished his place in the Sri Lankan national narrative.KeywordsPolitical EngagementEmphasis OriginalBare NounNarrative VoiceDetective FictionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.