Michael Ondaatje likes writing in other people’s houses. On the unseasonably hot weekend of our interview we meet at the home of one of Ondaatje’s friends, where the novelist has been staying on and off for the last several months, and where he wrote part of his new novel, Divisadero. It is a quiet house on an equally tranquil street in the Berkeley flats. Divisadero takes place in the Bay Area and by staying in this house Ondaatje was continuing a time-tested habit of moving to where his novels are set. When writing The English Patient he moved in to a small house in the Italian countryside, for Anil’s Ghost he found a house in his native Sri Lanka, and recently he took up residence in the French countryside while writing the portion of Divisadero that takes place in France. He says he can get work done anywhere, but that a particular house can ignite his imagination.

Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka, moved to England in 1954 with his mother, and relocated eight years later in Toronto. He began as a poet, and a very good one, twice winning the Governor General’s prize. He still writes poetry but has found his home in the novel, for which he’s earned an international reputation and has been awarded a long list of major awards including the Booker Prize for The English Patient. Divisadero is his fifth novel; he is also the author of ten books of poetry, two plays, three works of nonfiction, and a memoir.