Introduction

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Sonja Lehmann
which are not bound by the borders of nation-states. The focus on transnationalism
is even present in Ondaatje’s latest novel, which is hardly concerned with
migration at all: in Divisadero the same concerns are addressed, even though the
novel appeared completely opposed to transnational theories at first.
As my analysis of the texts has shown, theories on the phenomenon of transnational
migration describe the nature of identities in Ondaatje’s fiction much
more fittingly than the usual postcolonial concepts of liminality and hybridity.
Reading these texts from such a perspective brings out the finer points and subtleties
that all his fictional works contain. The clear-cut categories usually applied to
Ondaatje’s writing cannot (un)cover these aspects and are not able to do the texts
justice because they do not pay attention to the complex and detailed way the
issue of transnational identities is dealt with in them. Hardly surprising, these ordinarily
used categories are at times even downright rejected in the texts, such as
in In the Skin of a Lion. It appears that Ondaatje’s fiction strives to go beyond ordinary
categories. Given Ondaatje’s long-standing interest in the topic, starting with
Running in the Family in 1982 up to Divisadero in 2007, the novels undoubtedly do
not address a quickly passing trend in the perspective on migration but rather
seem to reflect a different form of migration. I therefore conclude that Ondattje’s
fiction can be described as a different form of migrant writing altogether. It would
now be interesting to compare other migrant literature to it to see if this is the
beginning of a new development in migrant writing or just a singular occurrence.