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    The Cat's Table
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    The Cat's Table
    Unavailable
    The Cat's Table
    Ebook284 pages4 hours

    The Cat's Table

    By Michael Ondaatje

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy in Colombo boards a ship bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the “cat’s table”—as far from the Captain’s Table as can be—with a ragtag group of “insignificant” adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another, bursting all over the place like freed mercury. But there are other diversions as well: one man talks with them about jazz and women, another opens the door to the world of literature. The narrator’s elusive, beautiful cousin Emily becomes his confidante, allowing him to see himself “with a distant eye” for the first time, and to feel the first stirring of desire. Another Cat’s Table denizen, the shadowy Miss Lasqueti, is perhaps more than what she seems. And very late every night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and his fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever.
     
    As the narrative moves between the decks and holds of the ship and the boy’s adult years, it tells a spellbinding story—by turns poignant and electrifying—about the magical, often forbidden, discoveries of childhood and a lifelong journey that begins unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateOct 4, 2011
    ISBN9780307700452
    Unavailable
    The Cat's Table
    Author

    Michael Ondaatje

    Booker Prize-winning novelist Michael Ondaatje is the author of many collections of poetry and several books of fiction, including In the Skin of a Lion and The English Patient. He and his wife live in Toronto.

    Read more from Michael Ondaatje

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