Running in the Family

'During certain hours at certain years in our lives we see ourselves as remnants from the earlier generations that were destroyed... I think all of our lives have been terribly shaped by what went on before us.'Twenty-five years after leaving his native Sri Lanka for the cool winters of Ontario a chaotic dream of tropical heat and barking dogs pushes Michael Ondaatje to travel back home and revisit a childhood and a family he never fully understood. Along with his siblings and children Ondaatje gathers rumours anecdotes poems records and memories to piece together this fragmented portrayal of his family's past his father's destructive alcoholism and the colourful stories and secrets of ancestors both disgraced and adored throughout centuries of Sri Lankan society.In an exotic evocative portrait of the heat wildlife sounds and silences of the Sri Lankan landscape Ondaatje combines vivid recreations of a privileged eccentric older generation with a deeply personal reconciliatory journey in which he explores his own ghosts and how his family's extraordinary history continues to influence his life.