{"product_id":"a-year-of-last-thingsbooks","title":"A Year of Last Things","description":"\u003cb\u003eINSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Included on \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e’s Best Recent Poetry • Longlisted for the 2024 UK Poet Laureate's Laurel Prize • One of the \u003ci\u003eGlobe and Mail\u003c\/i\u003e's most anticipated books of 2024 • Named a Best Book of 2024 by \u003ci\u003eWinnipeg Free Press\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith \u003ci\u003eA Year of Last Things\u003c\/i\u003e, acclaimed novelist Michael Ondaatje returns to poetry, where he began his career over fifty years ago, and what a return it is.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBorn in Sri Lanka during the Second World War, Ondaatje was sent as a child to school in London, and later moved to Canada. While he has lived here since, these poems reflect the life of a writer, traveller and watcher of the world – describing himself as a “mongrel,” someone born out of\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003ediverse\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003ecultures. Here, rediscovering the influence of every border crossed, he moves back and forth in time, from a childhood in Sri Lanka to Moliere’s chair during his last stage performance, from icons in Bulgarian churches to the California coast and loved Canadian rivers, merging memory with the present, looking back on a life of displacement and discovery, love and loss. At first sight it is a glittering collection of fragments and memories – but small, intricate pieces of a life are precisely what matter most to Ondaatje.  They make an emotional history. As he writes in the opening poem: \u003ci\u003e“Reading the lines he loves \/ he slips them into a pocket, \/ wishes to die with his clothes \/ full of torn free stanzas \/ and the telephone numbers \/ of his children in far cities”.\u003c\/i\u003e  Poetry – where language is made to work hardest and burns with a gem-like flame – is what Ondaatje has returned to in this intimate history.","brand":"Ondaatje, Michael","offers":[{"title":"Hardback (Poetry)","offer_id":46773829468384,"sku":"","price":20.4,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0330\/3125\/8248\/files\/BNCImageAPI_df42211a-76eb-4460-b16f-4fa17e4580fb.jpg?v=1734626048","url":"https:\/\/agricola-street-books.myshopify.com\/products\/a-year-of-last-thingsbooks","provider":"Agricola Street Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}