Download or read book Not Needing All the Words written by Annick Hillger and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2006-05-26 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading selected texts by Michael Ondaatje, including the novels In the Skin of a Lion and The English Patient and the poem "Birch Bark," Annick Hillger demonstrates how his writing both answers and challenges attempts to delineate the idea of a Canadian national self. She sets Ondaatje's work within the context of theoretical and philosophical ideas, developing the notion of a "literature of silence" concerned with finding a ground for self beyond the realm of language.