John Fraser, the current Master of Massey College, said that "in Canada, his adopted home, Christopher Ondaatje is an officially controversial person, much served up in the media and sometimes dressed down. He elicits both admiration and anger, depending on what he is up toùhis unpredictability being as fascinating to journalists as his great success . . . He has made and lost fortunes; in business, he is a gambler of great daring who can also cut out of the game faster than one of his beloved leopards at full run; he is remarkably considerate and passionate but he can be as cold-blooded about obtaining or abandoning goals; he is a generous benefactor, a hard bargainer, and an altruistic dreamer; he is fickle and a pushover for a wild and chancy scheme that captures his imagination . . . Most of all, though, I feel beguiled by his complicated passion to reach out and understand."
These words were taken from Fraser's perceptive introduction to Christopher Ondaatje's strangely revealing and sometimes painful autobiography The Man-Eater of Punanai, which dealt with the break-up and decline of his family in post-independent Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Since then, Ondaatje, who came to Canada in 1956 after an education in England and a brief stint in the financial corridors of London, amassed a fortune on Bay Street, founded and nurtured a fledgling publishing companyùPagurian Pressùinto one of Canada's fifty most profitable corporate finance companies, and then suddenly, in 1988, sold all of his corporate interests and left Canada for England. There he returned to his first love, the publishing world. He has written seven books with some success, the most notable being the two biographies on the life of Sir Richard Burton, the Victorian explorer (Sindh Revisited and Journey to the Source of the Nile). Woolf in Ceylon is perhaps Ondaatje's most ambitious work. In this, his eighth and he says final book, he has combined exploration, biography and literary criticism. He examines a hitherto misunderstood giant of the Victorian literary world, Leonard Woolf, and his career as a civil servant in Ceylon.
Drawing on his own personal experience of Ceylon and Empire, Ondaatje compares the way of life during imperial days with that of the post-colonial era. A careful reading reveals a number of unique similarities between the two men, Woolf and Ondaatje; both are "outsiders" who gave up their careers to pursue literature and intellectual achievement. In an exclusive Canadian interview Books in Canada talked to Christopher Ondaatje about his new book.

Olga Stein: Generally one is driven to research and write about a person because one identifies with important aspects of his or her life. You, for example, were born into a well-to-do-family like Leonard Woolf, whose father was a successful Barrister in London. Your childhood was spent on a tea plantation in Ceylon. Yet both you and Woolf were forced to fend for yourselves when you were mere adolescents. Your families lost their wealthùWoolf's because his father died at the age of forty-two, and you because the family business ground to a halt once Ceylon gained its independence. Would you say that these similarities stirred in you some profound recognition and directed you in the writing of this book?

Christopher Ondaatje: I don't think there is any doubt that, first, my background compelled me to live the life I led with the ambition circumstance forced on me; and, second, that Woolf's background caused me to understand and identify with Woolf to a point where I felt I could write this book. I don't think many authors could have tackled it. You would have had to have lived the life of frustration, have ambition, and also have both the Ceylon and English experience.

BiC: In your Introduction you write that when Woolf first arrived in Ceylon, he was an "unconscious imperialist". Later he would develop anti-imperialist feelings because of his experience living and working among the Ceylonese. You also say that you share many of the conflicting emotions Woolf developed towards his work "governing" the Ceylonese and towards the realities of British colonialism. How did your own view of colonialism evolve as you matured intellectually beyond simply taking British imperialism for granted?

CO: Growing up in a prosperous colonial environment it was impossible not to take imperialism for granted. Woolf used it as his passport to Ceylon; and I used it as my passport to England, public school, and even my entry into the City of London. It is only as you grow older and mature intellectually that you realise that there is another side to the coin. Many people never realise this. Eventually (as is the case with Woolf) I did something about it. I gave something back.
BiC: You were sent to Britain as a school boy to get a proper education. What was that like? I ask because you write that Woolf never felt that he belonged in St Pauls School (even though he won a scholarship to go there, which paid for an education his family wouldn't otherwise have been able to afford). He forced himself to fit in, but it never changed the basic fact that he felt like an outsider. How does that resonate with your own experience of living in Britain?

CO: Woolf went to St Pauls School in Londonùand (as he says) always felt like an outsider. But St Pauls is a very good school and Woolf used it as a stepping stone to get into Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a very lucky boy. I was lucky too. I was sent to Blundell's Schoolùalso a good school in Devon. I was an outsider tooùbut in my case my ambition (I was entirely alone) made me realise that I had to make Blundell's work for me. It was the only chance I hadùeducation, England, stepping up in the world etc. So I made it work, and it was also my "home"ùan important thing that was different from Woolf. He was in England and at home. Blundell's became my security blanket, and even though I couldn't afford to go to Oxford or Cambridge (which I craved) I made the best of what I was given. I shudder to think where I would be if I didn't have my Blundell's education. It taught me to think for myself.
However I do know what it is to be an outsider. Woolf was intensely conscious of his Jewish origins on both sides of his familyùjust as I am intensely conscious of my own Protestant Dutch-burgher origin in Ceylon. I was an "outsider" at an English public school (obviously foreign), an "outsider" in the City of London; and an "outsider" in Canada where I had to cut a swath through Bay Street and the publishing world. It's only now, with the knighthood and literary success in England (unlike the business success in Canada) that I am more accepted and much more a part of the literary and art world.

BiC: You state that "one can discern the outline of Woolf's work and attitudes in Ceylon: a dislike of injustice and the decisiveness and courage to act against it, combined with a certain insensitivity bordering on arrogance and ruthlessness. He undoubtedly was a intellectual, but he was also an intensely practical man." I understand that these qualities shaped his career as a civil servant, but how are they reflected in his literary interests, or, for that matter, in his decision to marry Virginia Woolf, a person who not only overshadowed Leonard's talents, but complicated his life in a myriad other ways?

CO: Woolf was an intensely practical man. He loved Virginia. But there is little doubt in my mind that his marriage to Virginia helped enormously. She was very much part of the literary eliteùthe circle he coveted. Virginia was his entrance ticket. He chose this literary (and social) career over that of a more mundane civil service career in the colonies. (In the end I did the same when I chucked in the power and adulation of finance for the world of exploration and writing. Even though the financial rewards were less, other achievements were far more stimulating.) Woolf too gave back much more than he took. He was the backbone of the Bloomsbury set, and Hogarth Press made a lot of things happen which might not have happened.
Woolf valued intellectual probity. Quentin Bell says that this was one of his grand characteristics. I agree. He also said that Woolf, both as a novelist and as a politician, was inhibited by his own honesty. Again I agree. I think it would have been impossible for Woolf, as Virginia Woolf's husband, to have written the novels that we know he was capable of. The Village in the Jungle is a minor classic; but it is only (after Virginia died) when he wrote his incredible 5-volume autobiography, that he really showed his literary genius. Until that time he had Virginia, Hogarth Press and the Labour Party as his main responsibilities. He was a very responsible man. You could lean on himùand many did. In the end the long hours at home with Virginia, in the publishing office, and in the political committee rooms, bore some recognised fruit.
"What a life he has led," said E M Forster, "and how well he has led it." Of how many people can we say this? He was a most remarkable man.