Summary
Analysis
Ondaatje lists various headlines from the local papers. A tennis championship ends in Colombo; Fred’s Astaire’s sister marries; a Russian man assassinates the French President; American women try to steal Valentino’s corpse from his grave; Charlie Chaplin is in Ceylon, studying dance.
In several chapters, Ondaatje presents events or sensory details as a stream of consciousness without explanation or context. Rather than explain a situation, these passages provide the reader with an overall sense of the time or place. In this case, these headlines situate the upcoming action of the story in the 1920s.