Born in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in 1943, novelist and poet Michael Ondaatje has made his home in Toronto for most of his adult life. That makes him the most proximate speaker yet in Just Buffalo’s wildly successful Babel series. Ondaatje is best known for The English Patient, which won him the Man Booker Prize in 1992. Two more recent novels, Anil’s Ghost (2000) and Divisadero (2007), have won wide acclaim as well.

But, for this writer’s money, Ondaatje’s genius as a novelist is surpassed by his gift for poetry, both as a poet himself and as an editor for Toronto’s Coach House Books. And the Ondaatje book most worth ferreting out in a used bookstore is Elimination Dance (La danse eliminatoire) (1978); the title refers to a dance in which a caller retires dancers from the floor by categories (“Women who’ve had to give up the accordion because of pinched breasts”; “Any lover who has gone into a flower shop on Valentine’s Day and asked for clitoris when he meant clematis”).

The English Patient, however, is the centerpiece of the events Just Buffalo has organized around Ondaatje’s appearance next Wednesday: Sri Lanka Night at the International Institute—an evening of Sri Lankan food, music, dance, and culture (Friday, October 24, 6:30pm, 864 Delaware Avenue); and a screening of director Anthony Minghella’s 1996 Oscar-winning film adaptation of the novel at the Crane Library (Saturday, October 25, 2pm, 633 Elmwood Avenue).

These two events are, in fact, as close as you’re likely to come to Ondaatje unless you’ve already got a ticket. His appearance at Babeville on October 29 is, like the entire Babel season, completely sold out. To check out what you’re missing, visit www.justbuffalo.org.

—geoff kelly