DIVISADERO

New York City, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 273 pages. The author's fifth novel. Now considered a contemporary classic. The first appearance of the title in the United States. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. The Canadian (which normally precedes) and American Editions were released simultaneously. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Michael Ondaatje's "Divisadero". At the absolute top of his form. Cements his stature as a writer's writer, evident in another celebrated writer's rave review: "The story is simple, almost mythical, stemming from a family on a California farm that is ruptured just as it is about to begin. Two daughters, Anna and Claire, are raised not just as siblings but with the intense bond of twins. Coop, a boy from a neighboring farm, is folded into the girls' lives as a hired hand and quasi-brother. Anna, Claire, and Coop form a triangle that is intimate and interdependent, a triangle that brutally explodes less than thirty pages into the book. We are left with a handful of glass, both narratively and thematically. But 'Divisadero' is a deeply ordered, full-bodied work, and the fragmented characters, severed from their shared past, persevere in relation to one another, illuminating both what it means to belong to a family and what it means to be alone in the world. The notion of twins, of one becoming two, pervades the novel, and so the farm in California is mirrored by a farm in France, the setting for another plot line in the second half of the book, giving us, in a sense, two novels in one. The stories are not only connected but calibrated by Ondaatje to reveal a haunting pattern of parallels, echoes, and reflections across time and place. Like Nabokov, another master of twin-ning, Ondaatje's method is deliberate but discreet, and it was only in re-reading this beautiful book that the intricate play of doubles was revealed. Every sign of the author's genius is here: The searing imagery, the incandescent writing, the calm probing of life's most turbulent and devastating experiences. No one writes as affectingly about passion, about time and memory, about violence, subjects that have shaped Ondaatje's previous novels. But there is a greater muscularity to 'Divisadero', an intensity born from its restraint. Episodes are boiled down to their essential elements, distilled but dramatic, resulting in a mosaic of profound dignity, with an elegiac quietude that only the greatest of writers can achieve" (Jhumpa Lahiri). An absolute "must-have" title for Michael Ondaatje collectors. This copy is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by Michael Ondaatje. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a contemporary classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing (American) still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws (rubbing, creasing, and wear on the DJ, bumps on the corners, and wear on the spine) even if they are New. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce signed copy thus. Winner of the Booker Prize in 1992 for "The English Patient". One of the greatest writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER MICHAEL ONDAATJE TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0307266354.