The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

Michael Ondaatje

$24.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Vintage
17 June 2025

Poetry; Poetry by individual poets; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Historical mysteries; Westerns; Fiction: special features

An award-winning reinterpretation of the life and death of infamous outlaw Billy the Kid, from Booker prize winning author Michael Ondaatje.

Booker prize winning author Michael Ondaatje invites you on a brutal, beautiful journey into the American West. . .

At twenty-one years old, Billy the Kid has killed a man for each year he's been alive.

Roaming the blasted planes of the Wild West, he moves between friends, foes and lovers, fighting to keep just one step ahead of the law. Yet in this twisted wasteland - a country of mad dogs, of sweat and gore and blinding heat - the sheriffs play dirty too.

Melding prose, poetry, imagined interviews and ephemeral photography, Ondaatje weaves together a lyrical reinterpretation of Billy's short, infamous existence, forming a portrait of a young man, and a young country, borne out of violence, threaded through with disaster, yet rich in wonder.

'Ondaatje's language is clean and energetic, with the pop of bullets. This is literature, art.' Annie Dillard

'Ondaatje's eye for detail is wonderful and he uses it poetically, with superb restraint' Larry McMurtry

By: Michael Ondaatje
Imprint: Vintage
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 199mm, Width: 130mm, Spine: 9mm
Weight: 98g
ISBN: 9781529945683
ISBN 10: 1529945682
Pages: 128
Publication Date: 17 June 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Michael Ondaatje is the author of seven novels; a memoir, Running in the Family; a non-fiction book on film, The Conversations- Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film; and several books of poetry, including The Cinnamon Peeler and Handwriting. The English Patient received the Booker Prize in 1992 and the Golden Man Booker in 2018, and was made into a film directed by Anthony Minghella. Anil's Ghost was awarded the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Giller Prize and the Prix Medicis. Born in Sri Lanka, Michael Ondaatje lives in Toronto.

Reviews for The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

Moving and tragic. . . . Ondaatje is a poet and even his prose moves with rhythmic circular precision * The New York Times Book Review * Wonderful.... Ondaatje’s language is clean and energetic, with the pop of bullets. This is literature, art. -- Annie Dillard At once violent and sensuous, calloused and tender * Granta * Ondaatje’s eye for detail is wonderful and he uses it poetically, with superb restraint -- Larry McMurtry