Between Homelands in Michael Ondaatje’s Fiction

Julie Banerjee Mehta is guest faculty at Loreto College, Kolkata. has an MA and a PhD in English Literature and South Asian Studies from the University of Toronto, where she taught courses on the works of Michael Ondaatje, and where she conceptualized and taught the Chancellor-endowed course on Asian Literatures and Cultures in Asia. Her translation of Tagore’s play Dak Ghar/Post Office was performed by Pleiades Theatre, Toronto, in 2010, to critical acclaim, and earned her the title of “One of Sixteen Most Influential South Asians in Canada”. She is the author of Dance of Life: The Mythology, History, and Politics of Cambodian Culture, and co-author of The Extraordinary Life of Hun Sen. Harish C. Mehta has an MA and a PhD in History from McMaster University, Canada, in the history of American foreign relations and Southeast Asia. He did graduate studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and taught history at McMaster, the University of Toronto, and Trent University. He is the author, most recently, of People’s Diplomacy of Vietnam: Soft Power in the Resistance War, 1965-1972, and of three books on Cambodian history. His research articles have appeared in International History Review, Diplomatic History, Peace and Change, The Historian, and History Compass. He has twice won the Samuel Flagg Bemis research award from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. He is currently editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed Rising Asia Journal (www.rajraf.org).

Introduction: In Search of Home PART ONE: THE ‘LOST’ FATHERLAND 1. “Gothic Detection” in Anil’s Ghost 2. Intimate Words: Intertextuality in Running in the Family PART TWO: MYTH, RACE, AND SUBVERSION 3. Idiosyncratic Histories: Revisionist Mythopoetics in The English Patient 4. Subversive Art and History in The English Patient and Divisadero 5.The Colonized Sikh Warrior in The English Patient PART THREE: SONGS FROM THE ‘HOOD’ 6. Jazzing Up the Facts in Coming Through Slaughter: Ondaatje’s Fictional “Archive” 7. Predatory Violence and Abuse of State Power in Billy the Kid 8. An Unprivileged Place: Journeying Selves in The Cat’s Table PART FOUR: TRAUMA IN SRI LANKAN CIVIL WAR HISTORY 9. An Invented Past: Representation of History in Anil’s Ghost 10. Connected by Tunnels of Light: Reading Care in Anil’s Ghost PART FIVE: WAR, GAMES, POKER, AND UNCERTAINTY 11.Teens, Trolls, and Toxic Games in Divisadero 12. Triad of Chance, Risk, and Security: Postwar Uncertainty in Warlight