X-Book

A Year of Last Things

Click Buy to Log in and see personalised pricing.

Send as a gift Get in the xigxag app
How does xigxag pricing work?

Listen to a sample

What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

With A Year of Last Things, acclaimed novelist Michael Ondaatje returns to poetry, where he began his career over fifty years ago, and what a return it is.

Born 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 diverse cultures.

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: “Reading the lines he loves / he slips them into a pocket, / wishes to die with his clothes / full of torn freestanzas / and the telephone numbers / of his children in far cities”. 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.

'My life always stops for a new book by Michael Ondaatje'
JHUMPA LAHIRI, author of The Namesake

©2024 Michael Ondaatje (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

After a break of nearly 20 years, Ondaatje has returned to poetry, ruminating on sliding doors moments in life… This is a generous, moving book
Guardian
Extraordinarily attuned to hauntings… Ondaatje is a connoisseur – and creator – of atmospheres… Wonderful
Observer, *Poetry Book of the Month*
Each new book of Michael Ondaatje’s is a literary event, but that is particularly true for his books of poetry. In A Year of Last Things he comes close to writing something like a timeless poem, “a memory poem” that reflects outside and inside time at the same moment, recording the mercurial, mysterious feeling of being alive. The poems become intimate, unresolved stories, loyal to feeling and presence, the lyricism of dreams applied to narratives of lives and landscapes. A Year of Last Things is a remarkable, incomparable new collection
Terrance Hayes, author of So to Speak
Michael Ondaatje’s love of the world and its wonders, the kindness he offers, the elegant lyricism of his sentences, the joy of storytelling... restore belief in the beauty and power of literature and, by extension, of humanity
Aleksandar Hemon, author of The Lazarus Project
Michael Ondaatje defies the normal distinction between poet and novelist. His writing is consistently tuned to a visionary pitch
Graham Swift, author of Waterland
My life always stops for a new book by Michael Ondaatje
Jhumpa Lahiri, author of The Namesake
Dazzling...This collection radiates the joy of a fully realized, literary life
Publishers Weekly
A Year of Last Things contains moments of great skill… Ondaatje has a special knack for sensation and for conveying the feeling of something inexorably being taken away
Times Literary Supplement
Author Michael Ondaatje
Narrator Michael Ondaatje
Duration 2 hours and 11 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781529937053
Format Audiobook
Publisher Random House
Genre Modern and contemporary poetry (c 1900 onwards), Narrative theme: Death, grief, loss, Narrative theme: Sense of place, Poetry by individual poets
Availability AU, GB, IE

More from the same

Author

Narrator

About xigxag

xigxag is an independent, UK-based audiobook platform and the UK’s only B Corp certified audiobook company. We offer nearly 150,000 audiobooks, all with professional human narration. No AI-generated voices. xigxag is rated an Ethical Consumer Best Buy for audiobooks and a top-rated ethical bookshop.

There is no subscription. You buy the audiobooks you want, you own them permanently, and prices start at £8.99. The more you listen over the year, the less you pay per book, and there is always a selection in Listen for Less from £3.99. You can also send audiobooks as gifts using our audiobook gift cards or in-app gifting.

Every audiobook on xigxag has honest reviews covering both the book and the narration, and our community features make it easy to share what you are listening to, discover what others recommend, and find your next listen.

Download or stream on iOS, Android, or in your browser. Browse the full catalogue at xigxag.co.uk.