It is the 1970s in Northern California. A farmer and his teenage daughters, Anna and Claire, work the land with the help of Coop, the enigmatic young man who lives with them. Theirs' is a makeshift family, until they are riven by an incident of violence - of both hand and heart - that 'sets fire to the rest of their lives'. This is a story of possession and loss, about the often discordant demands of family, love, and memory. Written in the sensuous prose for which Michael Ondaatje's fiction is celebrated, "Divisadero" is the work of a master story-teller.

Accolades

Shortlisted for Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book - Caribbean and Canada 2008.

Reviews

'Hauntingly beautiful What an unusual, and unusually rich, experience it is to read Divisadero those who spend time within its pages will discover even more proof - not that they needed it - of Michael Ondaatje's peerlessness as a storyteller and poet' Washington Post Book World 'Magnificent From its first to last telling sentence, this aesthetic tale, poetic with human detail, is a rare and precious pleasure' USA Today 'Plumply imagined, deeply romantic but vividly traumatic This novel bravely jostles the uncomfortable edges of literary storytelling' Alan Warner, Guardian 'My life always stops for a new book by Michael Ondaatje. I began Divisadero as soon as it came into my possession and over the course of a few evenings was captivated by Ondaatje's finest novel to date' Jhumpa Lahiri

Author Biography

Michael Ondaatje is the author of four previous novels, a memoir, a non-fiction book on film and several books of poetry. His novel The English Patient won the Booker Prize; another of his novels, Anil's Ghost, won the Irish Times International Fiction Prize and the Prix Medicis. Born in Sri Lanka, he now lives in Toronto.