“Beautiful . . . I urge you to read this book.” —The New York Times

“Michael Ondaatje is a brilliantly gifted poet and memoirist. . . . What he writes about most beautifully is work. Mr. Ondaatje is passionate about process, the way work, particularly construction of all kinds, is done and how it feels to do it. . . . A gorgeous set piece that lives on in the reader’s eye.” —The New York Review of Books

“A triumph—a powerful and revelatory accomplishment.” —The Times Literary Supplement

“In the Skin of a Lion has the scope and wealth of incident of a popular novel and the destiny and texture of a prose poem.” —The Washington Post

“Intoxicatingly immediate.” —The Sunday Times

“In the Skin of a Lion is Michael Ondaatje’s finest achievement. Beautiful, moving, important, it will make you look at Toronto afresh.” —Ottawa Citizen

“Splendidly evocative and entertaining.” —The Toronto Star

“Nearly every page reveals another example of Ondaatje’s precise, beautiful and startlingly original language.” —Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“What is most moving is the human connectedness of this book . . . so densely erotic, so subtly sensual, so intensely responsive.” —Malahat Review

“In the Skin of a Lion is an act of magic!” —Alberto Manguel

“A brilliantly imaginative blend of history, lore, passion and poetry.” —Russell Banks

“A magical book. Michael Ondaatje defies the normal distinction between poet and novelist. His writing is consistently tuned to a visionary pitch.” —Graham Swift

“Ondaatje has written into the vivid life of fiction a part of the history of the building of Toronto as no official history would have conceived it and as no official history can now erase it.” —Adele Wiseman