Warlight

Set in London after the end of World War II, Canadian author Michael Ondaatje’s historical novel Warlight (2018) follows fourteen-year-old Nathaniel, whose parents leave for a one-year government assignment in Singapore. They leave him and his sister, Rachel, with their mysterious housemate, Walter, also known as “The Moth.” While living with The Moth, Nathaniel and Rachel encounter a host of other eccentric figures who leave strong impressions on their lives and their memories of the postwar period. An atypical coming-of-age story, Warlight vividly characterizes many of the complex emotions and adaptations that children experienced during World War II, showing how those adaptations affected their adult personalities.

The novel begins in 1945, just after the end of World War II. When Nathaniel’s father is stationed in Singapore, he and Nathaniel’s mother say goodbye to their children for the year. The children remain at their house in the care of The Moth. Nathaniel’s mother entrusts him with her children, citing that they worked closely during the war as firewatchers at the Grosvenor House Hotel. The children suspect that The Moth and their mother worked on more covert jobs together.

Though their parents had intended to place them in boarding school, Nathaniel and Rachel convince The Moth to let them live at home. When The Moth invites his friends to move into the house, life quickly gets interesting. One friend, The Darter, smuggles greyhounds through the black market into London to supply its abusive yet burgeoning gambling industry. He also smuggles explosives to London by transporting them in barges via the Waltham Abbey Royal Gunpowder Mills. The Darter helps Nathaniel get a job at a restaurant. There, Nathaniel meets Agnes Street. They start dating each other, and Agnes convinces Nathaniel to work in the smuggling business. When Agnes tells him that she is insecure about never meeting his parents, Nathaniel asks The Darter to pose as his father. The Darter proves himself generous and compassionate, even helping Rachel treat her emerging symptoms of epilepsy. He also gets Rachel a job in a local theatre.



When Nathaniel’s parents’ original contract term ends, they do not return, offering no explanation. Nathaniel worries that he is being stalked, and suspects that his mother remains somewhere in London. One evening, Nathaniel, Rachel, and The Moth are assaulted by the men who were following Nathaniel. Nathaniel is knocked out; when he regains consciousness, he and Rachel are safe. Later, they learn that The Moth did not survive. They briefly meet their mother, who tells them that she had to abandon them as part of an arrangement that would guarantee their safety. She leaves them again: Nathaniel is sent to a boarding school in America, and Rachel is sent to one in rural England.

The novel shifts forward to 1959. London’s Foreign Office hires Nathaniel to work for a counterintelligence operation known as The Silent Correction, which seeks to squelch espionage efforts in England. Nathaniel buys a house in his mother’s childhood neighborhood, The Saints. He tries to reunite with the friends he made through The Moth but is unable to track most of them down. Nathaniel and Rachel now have a difficult relationship from being separated as children. Rachel has a son, Walter, named in honor of The Moth.

Nathaniel’s real motive for working for The Silent Correction is to get access to data that might help him find out what happened to his mother. As his search grows increasingly feverish and desperate, he breaks into the office at night to continue his research. He discovers that a senior official, Marsh Felon went to his mother’s funeral. Felon was also his mother’s childhood acquaintance. After digging further, Nathaniel learns that they worked together in Yugoslavia and were probably once in love. The daughter of a Yugoslavian they worked against ultimately found and killed his mother.



At the end of the novel, Nathaniel looks for The Darter. He finds out that he is now married to Agnes, and that they have a daughter who is probably Nathaniel’s biological child. Nathaniel hopes to one day encounter his daughter in passing but relinquishes his grasp on his past. Warlight thus ends with the suggestion that its protagonist has matured enough to move beyond the difficult experiences and attachments of the past.