Author event: Michael Ondaatje October 6, 2011

Michael Ondaatje, author of five previous novels (including Booker Prize winner The English Patient), a memoir, a nonfiction book on film, and eleven books of poetry, presents his new novel, The Cat’s Table. A book signing follows.

About The Cat’s Table:
In the early 1950s, an 11-year-old boy boards a ship bound for England, and at mealtimes is seated at the “cat’s table” with “insignificant” adults and two other boys. As the ship sails from Sri Lanka to London, the boys explore and experience the curious wonders and hazards of the people on board. The narration weaves back and forth between a boyhood innocence and the perspective of an adult looking back, still on the “journey.”

Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian novelist and poet of Burgher origin. He is perhaps best known for his Booker Prize-winning novel, "The English Patient", which was adapted into an Academy-Award-winning film.

Official Website: http://www.artic.edu/aic/calendar/event?EventID=9069&ProgramID=349&Month=10_2011