The Contemporary Novel in English 24

Michael Ondaatje's title Warlight refers not only to wartime blackout but also to the penumbra cast by memory of unresolved guilt over subsequent generations. The book opens as foundling narrative, with two children apparently abandoned by their parents, but rapidly transforms into spy thriller as all characters are revealed as involved in espionage, and processes of transference, displacement and repression come to dominate the narrative. Meditation on the displacement of London as imperial capital is combined with the possibility of absorption of the residue of lost empire by Ondaatje as Canadian author of Sir Lankan origin.