`Magical transformations, philosophical speculations, novelistic tensions: such are the elements of this readable, luminous book. Add a muted sense of humour, a sinewy style, a calligrapher's instinct for the mise en page and you have just begun to list the charms of The Cinnamon Peeler' * Edmund White *
`His poems read with the same whimsical precision and authority one finds in Ondaatje's prose. He is the most sensibly ironic writer I've read in years, and the most generously disposed. Would that all worlds were this deftly attended' * Robert Creeley *
`Ondaatje's poems are a joy, as all his writing is. The wonderful twists, painful and funny; the utterly individual touch and sumptuous wealth of language: they're all familiar, but as one could expect, they seem to keep getting better, more assured and sometimes more crazy' * W.S. Merwin *

Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka and lives in Toronto. The English Patient won the Booker Prize in 1992 and was made into an Oscar-winning film directed by Anthony Minghella.