He has always been fascinated by the technology of modern image-making, from software like Photoshop to photocopies, faxes and polaroids.

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Obviously fascinated with families, he has written eloquently elsewhere about his relationship with his mother, and has peopled his fiction with fractured family relationships.

ECONOMIST: How writers are made by their families

Since then he has quickly earned celebrity status in Norway, where people are fascinated by the rags-to-riches story of a man who lived on the streets for many years and lived a hedonistic lifestyle.

BBC: Hariton Pushwagner exhibition in Milton Keynes

Mr Ondaatje has long been fascinated by Burton, and in the 1990s he retraced the explorer's steps, first to Sindh province and then to the headwaters of the Nile.

ECONOMIST: Museum sponsorship