Michael Ondaatje, The Cinnamon Peeler

Translated by: Mieczysław Godyń, Agata Hołobut, Jerzy Jarniewicz

Editors: Agata Hołobut, Jerzy Illg

Cover design: Maria Gromek

Publisher: Wydawnictwo Znak

Memory and the experience of time play a great role in Michael Ondaatje’s poetry. A characteristic quality of many of his works is subtle inclusion of his own autobiography. Personal experiences, intimate relationships with his loved ones, childhood memories – combined with the poet’s extraordinary imagination – become transformed into universal

stories. The poems, permeated with myths and legends from his native Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), seek roots in Sinhalese culture, reach for the history and religions of the East, and confront what is remembered and inherited with the reality of the New World. Multilayered and unpredictable, saturated with surprising imagery and sensuous eroticism the poems intrigue and invite individual interpretations.

Zbieracz cynamonu is the first presentation of Michael Ondaatje’s poetry in book form in Poland.