For devotees of Michael Ondaatje, it's three months and counting.
His Canadian publishers, McClelland & Stewart, have announced an April 22 publication date for his long-awaited new novel, Anil's Ghost. Meanwhile, in the United States, Alfred A. Knopf plans a May release, as does Bloomsbury in Britain.
Set in Ondaatje's native Sri Lanka, the book, according to one promotional blurb, is "a profoundly disturbing and timeless work of art and a revelatory journey which will surprise readers."
According to M & S, it's "a spellbinding story of character and event and of a culture's attempt to submerge a political moment in its history."
Ondaatje, who read this week from the work of James Baldwin at World Literacy of Canada's KAMA reading series in Toronto, says "it's very difficult to say what the book's about. Read it," he suggested.
Ondaatje's editor, Ellen Seligman, says finished copies of the novel will be available for reviewers by mid-March. No advance proofs are being bound.
It's been seven years since the publication of Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning The English Patient,later made into an Academy-Award winning film.
In addition to three other novels, Ondaatje has published four volumes of poetry and a family memoir, Running in the Family.
He and his wife, novelist Linda Spalding, are scheduled to speak on March 2 at the State University of New York's Writers Institute.
Although notoriously averse to the publicity circuit, Ondaatje, Seligman said, "will not be invisible. He will do selected things."
Ondaatje said he's been busy doing final revisions, and tends to tinker until the last possible moment.