Though set primarily in Italy, Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel draws on his Sri Lankan background — the character of Kip, the Sikh sapper, was partly inspired by the South Asian soldiers who served in the British forces during World War II. The novel's meditation on colonialism, identity, and maps has particular resonance when read in a country that spent a century under British administration.
Worth reading alongside Running in the Family for a fuller sense of Ondaatje's relationship to the island.