The Cat's Table

Atmospheric, elegiac and at times, like Ondaatje's most famous novel, The English Patient, unbearably poignant

Sebastian Shakespeare, Tatler

Extraordinary

Guardian

Part memoir, complete masterpiece... Written with tenderness, wisdom and sharp emotional recall, this is an exuberant elegy to innocence

Maggie Fergusson, Intelligent Life

One of the most admirable and enthralling literary novels of the year

Daily Mail

Grave and playful at the same time, beautifully written and moving

The Times

Superbly poised between the magic of innocence and the melancholy of experience

The Economist

Michael Ondaatje's impressive new novel, containing dreams and fantasy between a ship's flanks...is, in the most etymological way, a wonderful novel: one full of wonders

Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph

It's impossible to explain through any discussion of plot and character the hypnotic brilliance of The Cat's Table. The joy of boyhood and the darkness at its edges are conveyed in sense of extraordinary imagination... It is entirely...well, Ondaatje-esque

Kamila Shamsie, Guardian, Books of the Year

Vividly follows the passage from Ceylon to England of an 10 year-old boy on a line full of eccentric, mysterious passengers

Ann Saddlemyer, Irish Times, Books of the Year

Ondaatje's prose, flawless as ever, deals with loneliness, friendship and pre-pubescent love

Christine Dwyer Hickey, Irish Times, Books of the Year

Wondrous

Financial Times

I love this book: the boys running wild on the long sea voyage, the slow revelation of the adult world they don't fully understand, the loss of the past and the beginning of the future, and even a sort of thriller in there! And the beauty of the sentences. Perfection

Salman Rushdie