-
Reclaiming the Past: Michael Ondaatje and the Body of History
- Journal of Modern Literature
- Indiana University Press
- Volume 37, Number 2, Winter 2014
- pp. 141-160
- 10.2979/jmodelite.37.2.141
- Article
- Additional Information
This essay examines the connection between body, history, and nation in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient (1993). The novel dramatizes and responds to questions concerning national belonging and community, while at the same time it longs to escape or transcend nation and history. The dialectical push and pull of this desire to escape and return is animated through the way that The English Patient imagines the body as a contested and contesting space, a conduit into the past and the means through which that past might be reclaimed. As a consequence, I hope to nuance political assessments of the novel and of Ondaatje’s contribution to historiographical metafiction more broadly, as well as his dual status as both a postmodern and postcolonial writer.