Michael Ondaatje

I read this book the first time for one of my english classes, and as most material read for a class of any kind, i didn't pay much attention to it, just enough to be able to express some opinion on it. but after i read it a second time, it quickly became one of my most favourite books, not just for what it's about but because of the emotion, tone, and setting it emits. it's a book/autobiography by michael ondaatje- Running in the Family. it's about him going back to Ceylon to uncover his family history.
it's not so much the words that are encapturing, it's the imagery that is so drawing. the minute i open to it's pages, the words wisk me to a tropical paradise, where i'm sitting in a chair that has just been re-threaded, on the porch of a house that has been lived in for generations, all around is green luxury of tropical and exotic species, and ground covered by natural earth and stone that has seen the lives of all who came before me. where warm monsoon rains drench everything under the sky and nothing is left dry even to a single drop, where all you can smell is the sweet scent of jasmine, magnolia, and vanilla orchids carried into the air by wafts of rain soaked breezes, and the thunderous bellow of a thousand raindrops fall to the ground in a symphony of sound that can only be heard in complete silence.

this is the opening of ondaatje's autobiography:

Drought since December,

All across the city men roll carts with ice clothed in sawdust. Later on, during a fever, the drought still continuing, his nightmare is that thorn trees in the garden send their hard roots underground towards the house climbing through windows so they can drink sweat off his body, steal the last of the saliva off his tongue.

He snaps on the electricity just before daybreak. For twenty five years he has not lived in this country, though up to the age of eleven he slept in rooms like this- with no curtains, just delicate bars across the windows so no one could break in. And the floors of red cement polished smooth, cool against bare feet.

Dawn through a garden. Clarity to leaves, fruit, the dark yellow of the King Coconut. This delicate light is allowed only a breif moment of the day. In ten minutes the garden will lie in a blaze of heat, frantic with noise and butterflies.

Half a page- and the morning is already ancient.