- Published: 25 August 2011
- ISBN: 9781448103850
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 384
The Cat's Table
- Published: 25 August 2011
- ISBN: 9781448103850
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 384
Atmospheric, elegiac and at times, like Ondaatje's most famous novel, The English Patient, unbearably poignant
Sebastian Shakespeare, Tatler
Extraordinary
Guardian
Grave and playful at the same time, beautifully written and moving
The Times
I love this book: the boys running wild on the long sea voyage, the slow revelation of the adult world they don't fully understand, the loss of the past and the beginning of the future, and even a sort of thriller in there! And the beauty of the sentences. Perfection
Salman Rushdie
It's impossible to explain through any discussion of plot and character the hypnotic brilliance of The Cat's Table. The joy of boyhood and the darkness at its edges are conveyed in sense of extraordinary imagination... It is entirely...well, Ondaatje-esque
Kamila Shamsie, Guardian, Books of the Year
Michael Ondaatje's impressive new novel, containing dreams and fantasy between a ship's flanks...is, in the most etymological way, a wonderful novel: one full of wonders
Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph
Ondaatje's prose, flawless as ever, deals with loneliness, friendship and pre-pubescent love
Christine Dwyer Hickey, Irish Times, Books of the Year
One of the most admirable and enthralling literary novels of the year
Daily Mail
Part memoir, complete masterpiece... Written with tenderness, wisdom and sharp emotional recall, this is an exuberant elegy to innocence
Maggie Fergusson, Intelligent Life
Superbly poised between the magic of innocence and the melancholy of experience
The Economist
Vividly follows the passage from Ceylon to England of an 10 year-old boy on a line full of eccentric, mysterious passengers
Ann Saddlemyer, Irish Times, Books of the Year
Wondrous
Financial Times