A close comparison of Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion and Hugh MacLennan's Barometer Rising reveals that Ondaatje's novel both challenges and has significant affinities with Canadian tradition. Both novels present revisionist readings of history from marginalized points of view; both juxtapose twentieth-century historical events with ancient texts (Homer's Odyssey for MacLennan's novel and The Gilgamesh Epic for Ondaatje's). Whereas Barometer Rising asserts Canada's importance in the world because of its traumatic participation in the First World War, In the Skin of a Lion celebrates the importance of the marginalized persons and events that have shaped Canada. Ondaatje's choices of marginalized people and events and the relatively unfamiliar Babylonian epic as intertext validate the use of the term "ex-centric" to describe his novel; however, like MacLennan's more typically Canadian novel, Ondaatje's ex-centric novel upholds traditional Canadian values.
