Michael Ondaatje

In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy in Colombo boards a ship bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the “cat’s table”—as far from the Captain’s Table as can be—with a ragtag group of “insignificant” adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another,...

At the end of World War II, four survivors live in an abandoned villa in Italy: a nurse, her English patient, a thief whose skills were put to heroic use during the war, and an Indian sapper hunting out unexploded bombs.