Is he a Sri Lankan or a Canadian? A novelist or a poet? Confusions abound over Michael Ondaatje’s choice of prose and place of domicile but there is no question that he is one of the best writers in the English language today.

Coming through Slaughter: Considered one of the best jazz novels ever written, the novel is a fictionalised version of the life of the New Orleans jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden and covers the last months of Bolden's sanity in 1907, as his music becomes more radical and his behaviour more erratic. A secondary character in the story is the photographer E. J. Bellocq. Both these historical figures are portrayed in ways that draw on their actual lives, but which depart from the facts in order to explore the novel's central theme – the relationship between creativity and self destruction.

The English Patient: The terrible histories of a critically burned English man, his Canadian nurse, an Italian thief, and an Indian sapper in the British Army are gradually revealed as they live out the end of World War II in an Italian villa. The historical backdrop for this novel is the Second World War in Northern Africa and Italy. Hana, a young Canadian Army nurse, lives in the abandoned Villa San Girolamo in Italy, which is filled with hidden, undetonated bombs. In her care is the man nicknamed ‘the English patient,’ of whom all Hana knows is that he was burned beyond recognition in a plane crash before being taken to the hospital by a Bedouin tribe.

He also claimed to be English. The only possession that the patient has is a copy of Herodotus' histories that survived the fire. The margins of this book are filled with his handwriting and while he is able to remember his explorations in the desert in great detail, he cannot state his own name. The patient is, in fact, László de Almásy, a Hungarian desert explorer who was part of a British archaeological group. He chose, however, to erase his identity and nationality. The English Patient won Ondaatje a booker prize and cemented his literary reputation.

Anil’s Ghost: This novel follows the life of Anil Tissera, a native Sri Lankan who left to study in the United States on a scholarship. During her time away she becomes a forensic anthropologist and returns to Sri Lanka in the midst of its civil war as part of a Human Rights Investigation by the United Nations.

Anil, along with archeologist Sarath Diyasena, discovers the skeleton of a recently burned victim in a government area. With the help of the mysterious Sarath, Anil sets out to identify the skeleton, nicknamed Sailor, and bring about justice for the nameless victims of the war.

Running in the Family: In the late 1970s Ondaatje returned to his native country, Sri lanka, to retrace the mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family. His journeys led to the writing of this memoir, which is a story of broken engagements, drunken suicide attempts and of parties with exquisitely dressed couples doing the Tango. Above all it is a book about Ondaatje’s family—his amazingly scandalous grandmother, Lalla, and his father Mervyn Ondaatje, an alcoholic, whom he hardly knew.