迈克尔•翁达杰（Michael Ondaatje，1943-）出生于斯里兰卡，十一岁时随母亲移居英国，十九岁移居加拿大，并在那里接受教育。他出版过五本小说、一本回忆录、一本关于电影的非虚构作品和几部诗集。他于一九九二年出版的小说《英国病人》（The English Patient）荣获布克奖，后被改编成同名电影，二〇〇〇年出版的小说《菩萨凝视的岛屿》（Anil’s Ghost）获吉尔奖和美第奇奖。二〇〇七年出版小说《遥望》（Divisadero），获得加拿大总督文学奖。他现居多伦多。

From the celebrated author of The English Patient and In the Skin of a Lion comes a remarkable new novel of intersecting lives that ranges across continents and time.

In the 1970s in Northern California, near Gold Rush country, a father and his teenage daughters, Anna and Claire, work their farm with the help of Coop, an enigmatic young man who makes his home with them. Theirs is a makeshift family, until it is riven by an incident of violence—of both hand and heart—that sets fire to the rest of their lives.

Divisadero takes us from the city of San Francisco to the raucous backrooms of Nevada’s casinos and eventually to the landscape of south-central France. It is here, outside a small rural village, that Anna becomes immersed in the life and the world of a writer from an earlier time—Lucien Segura. His compelling story, which has its beginnings at the turn of the century, circles around “the raw truth” of Anna’s own life, the one she’s left behind but can never truly leave. And as the narrative moves back and forth in time and place, we discover each of the characters managing to find some foothold in a present rough hewn from the past.

Breathtakingly evoked and with unforgettable characters, Divisadero is a multilayered novel about passion, loss, and the unshakable past, about the often discordant demands of family, love, and memory. It is Michael Ondaatje's most intimate and beautiful novel to date.

From the Hardcover edition.