The Cinnamon Peeler - Tapa blanda

`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 *

If Michael Ondaatje's novels have the compression and power of poetry, his poems read like narratives that have been pared down to their essence. The poems that have been brought together in this electrifying volume are stylish yet endlessly surprising explorations of friendship and passion, family history and personal mythology. Spanning twenty-seven years and representing the best poems from Ondaatje's hard-to-find earlier collections, The Cinnamon Peeler is a masterpiece of intelligence, wit and an exultant love of language.