Title: Stylistic Hybridity and Postmodern Truth Writing in Running in the Family

Abstract: In Running in the Family, Michael Ondaatje tries to construct a narrative of family biography via a stylistic hybridity of travelogue, memoir, and fiction. The dialogue between memoir, the second layer of the text, and travelogue, the first layer of the text, reveals the colonial history of Sri Lanka and the identity dilemma of the Ondaatje family. The metafictional narrative of the third textual layer makes possible the rewriting of history of the Ondaatje family, and the truth about the life of Ondaatje’s father. The latter textual layer’s subversion of the former, as well as the screening and revision of historical material in the metanarrative layer, highlights the constructive nature of truth, and the multiplicity of history. In so doing, Ondaatje conveys his understanding of truth in the postmodern age and his historical self-awareness as a postmodern writer.

Keywords: Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family, stylistic hybridity, postmodern truth

Author: Kun Liu, Lecturer, College of International Studies, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China.