‘If you don’t come to terms with the ghost of your father, it will never let you be your own man.’ Here Christopher Ondaatje (brother of novelist Michael) combines his voyage of filial discovery with another quest: to pursue his obsession with a story he heard at his father’s knee, of a man-eating leopard. If the symbolism of this is not already smacking you between the eyes, consider also that this double narrative — which takes the form of a journal interspersed with memoirs — is set against a third unfolding context: that of a war-torn country where Tamil Tigers, like leopards, and memories, may lurk in every shadow. This is a book about going where it is dangerous to go (whether emotionally or physically), and being prepared to face what you may find there.
Born in 1934, Ondaatje was brought up in Ceylon (Sri Lanka after 1972). His mother was from a Dutch burgher family and his father’s family had been ‘associated with public service and private achievement’ on the island for three centuries. But their aspirations and values were English, and Ondaatje was duly sent to school in England, and subsequently lived most of his life in Canada. Whereas mother was always ‘outgoing, loving and attentive’, father was more of a powder-keg, a legendary (that proving a key term) drinker and gambler who lost the family fortune. The means by which Ondaatje is finally able to come to terms with his father’s memory (which would spoil the book to reveal here) may owe more to wish-fulfilment than anything, but is a satisfying conclusion, even if it suggests that sometimes we have to make peace with the unknowable by the only means we have.
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