Jonathan Cape to publish ‘extraordinary’ new poetry collection by Ondaatje

Jonathan Cape has acquired a new poetry collection from the Booker Prize-winning author of The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje.

Robin Robertson, associate publisher of poetry, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, to A Year of Last Things from Ellen Levine at the Trident Media Group. Publication is scheduled for March 2024.

The publisher says: “With A Year of Last Things, the acclaimed Booker-Prize-winning novelist Michael Ondaatje returns to poetry – where he began his career, over 50 years ago – and what a return it is.”

Born in Sri Lanka during the Second World War, Ondaatje was sent alone to boarding school in London, and then ended up in Canada. Though he has lived there ever since, travel was “set in his blood”, the publisher says. “These poems reflect the life of a writer, traveller and watcher of the world. He has never conformed to Western traditions – always describing himself as ‘a mongrel’, someone who was born out of a truly diverse society.”

It adds: “Looking back on a life of displacement and discovery, love and loss, this is a brave and extraordinary book. At first sight it is a glittering collection of fragments, moments and memories – but small, beautiful pieces of life are precisely what matter most to Ondaatje. They make an emotional history. 

“Poetry – where language is made to work hardest, and burns with a gem-like flame – is what Ondaatje has returned to, and this is both an intimate personal record and a great artist’s guide to beauty.”

Ondaatje is the author of seven novels, a memoir, a non-fiction book on film, and several books of poetry. The English Patient won the Booker Prize in 1992 and the Golden Man Booker in 2018, and was adapted into an award-winning film; Anil’s Ghost won the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Giller Prize, and the Prix Médicis.

Robertson said: “Michael Ondaatje began his career as a poet, and brought that luminous intensity and depth to his celebrated fiction and non-fiction. Returning now to his wellspring and first craft, the poems gathered here in A Year of Last Things are jewels of held light."

Hannah Westland, publishing director at Jonathan Cape, said: “We are enormously proud to publish Michael Ondaatje at Jonathan Cape. A new book from him is a major literary event and this magnificent collection will delight new and devoted readers alike.”