Major Authors: Robertson Davies, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje

This chapter discusses the works of three Canadian novelists best known internationally: Robertson Davies, Margaret Atwood, and Michael Ondaatje. The careers of Davies, Atwood, and Ondaatje, although overlapping chronologically, represent distinctive stages in Canada's evolving cultural traditions and publishing practices since the 1950s. Davies's novels signal the first stage in a transition from colonial to postcolonial identity in post-war Canada. Atwood in the 1970s provided the script for a Canadian cultural and literary identity separate from British and American in what Carol Shields called ‘a period of explosive patriotism’. Ondaatje's novels and family memoir epitomize the ‘refocusing and defocusing’ of Canadian literature since the 1980s, coinciding with the nation's shifts into multiculturalism and transnationalism. The chapter first provides a background on Davies, Atwood, and Ondaatje's careers before considering some of their works, including the Deptford trilogy (Davies), The Handmaid's Tale (Atwood), and The English Patient (Ondaatje).