Michael Ondaatje – on being shortlisted

8th May, 2019

The fifth in our exclusive series of Q&As with shortlisted authors is Michael Ondaatje on the creation of Warlight.

1.        What do you think about being shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction?  Do you see yourself as a historical novelist?

I am thrilled! I am not sure if I am a historical novelist, but I grew up reading many of them, getting them from the public library– they were my absolute pleasure when I was young, living alongside the adventures of Scaramouche or Rob Roy, and even books such as Napoleon and his Marshals. 

2.     How did the people and times you write about in this novel first lodge in your imagination?

It had been there for a long time I think. It was the period when I was not in England. So as I wrote Warlight I was merging the time when I was in England with an earlier decade — a time where I had to do a great deal of research.

3.    What place does research have in your writing?  When does the fiction take over from the facts?

Sometimes a passage  will begin with a fragment of historical information that I will then let grow, so the fiction and adventure builds out from that. Sometimes the possibility of fiction and the real facts go hand in hand.

4.   Do you think that writing about past events is important for society?

Absolutely.