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The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

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The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

By: Michael Ondaatje
Narrated by: Nathan Osgood
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Booker prize winning author Michael Ondaatje invites you on a brutal, beautiful journey into the American West. . .

At twenty-one years old, Billy the Kid has killed a man for each year he’s been alive.

Roaming the blasted planes of the Wild West, he moves between friends, foes and lovers, fighting to keep just one step ahead of the law. Yet in this twisted wasteland – a country of mad dogs, of sweat and gore and blinding heat – the sheriffs play dirty too.
Melding prose, poetry, imagined interviews and ephemeral photography, Ondaatje weaves together a lyrical reinterpretation of Billy’s short, infamous existence, forming a portrait of a young man, and a young country, borne out of violence, threaded through with disaster, yet rich in wonder.

‘Ondaatje’s language is clean and energetic, with the pop of bullets. This is literature, art.’ Annie Dillard

'Ondaatje’s eye for detail is wonderful and he uses it poetically, with superb restraint' Larry McMurtry

© Michael Ondaatje 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

 Biographical Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction United States World Literature Old West Wild West

Critic Reviews

At once violent and sensuous, calloused and tender
Moving and tragic. . . . Ondaatje is a poet and even his prose moves with rhythmic circular precision
Ondaatje’s eye for detail is wonderful and he uses it poetically, with superb restraint (Larry McMurtry)
Wonderful.... Ondaatje’s language is clean and energetic, with the pop of bullets. This is literature, art. (Annie Dillard)
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