In the Skin of a Lion is the sprawling, often dreamlike story of Patrick Lewis, a Canadian man who moves from his rural hometown to Toronto in the 1920s. The novel was written by Canadian-Sri Lankan author Michael Ondaatje and published in 1987. Its loosely chronological narrative offers a patchwork of vivid, mysterious, tenuously connected stories that piece together Patrick’s journey over two decades, from the late 1910s to the late 1930s.

The story and its characters are firmly rooted in this tumultuous period of Canadian industrial history, as Patrick assumes various industrial jobs and crosses paths with immigrant workers, socialist activists, capitalist tycoons, and thieves. Looming in this historical landscape are the violence and dehumanization wrought by industrial advancement, the injustice of economic inequality, the trials of immigration, and the discomforts of forging an identity out of the complex factors of ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, and language.

The novel begins with a half-page prologue setting the scene: A man relates these stories to a girl (Patrick and Hana, respectively, as will become apparent late in the novel) as they drive through the early morning darkness toward Marmora, Ontario.

The novel is divided into three parts, each comprising several long chapters. Within those chapters, Ondaatje delineates subsections with breaks in the prose (typically using line breaks to separate related plot episodes and asterisks to denote significant scene changes), and the narration often shifts between present and past tense across those breaks in the text. Ondaatje favors the present tense for narrating more dramatic, physically immediate scenes, while he uses the past tense for less sensational spans, or when filling in background information. This relentless ambiguity of tense heightens the story’s surreality.

The first chapter describes Patrick’s boyhood in the remote farming town of Bellrock. He lives with his father, Hazen Lewis, who works as a cattle farmer. Patrick observes the day laborers who come into the town to work as loggers but otherwise have no connection with the town. The climax of this chapter is a harrowing incident on a freezing winter day when he and his father must rescue a cow that has fallen through the ice over a nearby swimming hole. When Patrick turns 15, his father abandons cattle farming and becomes a dynamiter, first for the Rathbun Timber Company and then for Richardson Mines. It is later revealed that his father is killed in a feldspar mining accident.

Patrick is absent from the following chapter, which centers around Nicholas Temelcoff, a Macedonian immigrant and daredevil construction worker who is helping to build the Bloor Street Viaduct. The first bourgeois characters in the novel appear: Rowland Harris, commissioner of public works, and Pomphrey, an architect. As Harris and Pomphrey observe the construction from afar, they see a group of nuns—lost in the night—crossing the bridge. The wind jerks them around, and one nun is thrown over the edge. Nicholas, hanging from a rope while doing work in midair, instinctively catches her as she falls, and they miraculously make it to safety. He takes her to a local Macedonian bar. He speaks to her, but she does not reply. After he passes out drunk, she cuts away her habit, abandoning her life as a nun, and runs away.

Patrick returns as the viewpoint character in Chapter 3 having recently moved to Toronto at age 21. He finds employment as a “searcher,” an independent amateur detective hired to help track down Ambrose Small, a millionaire real estate tycoon who went missing in recent years. Patrick’s search leads him to the home of Clara Dickens, an actress and Ambrose’s last known lover. Clara seduces Patrick. She introduces him to her friend Alice Gull, another actress. The three enjoy an idyllic time together at Alice’s farmhouse before Patrick must leave. Patrick and Clara continue their affair until Clara finally leaves him to join Ambrose in hiding. Patrick grieves her, and Alice unexpectedly arrives in Toronto, helping him recover from his depression. Patrick realizes where Clara and Ambrose must be hiding and goes to confront them. Upon being discovered, Ambrose attempts to murder Patrick, but Patrick escapes—albeit severely wounded. Clara helps Patrick heal from his injuries, and the two briefly rekindle their affair before Clara returns to Ambrose again.

Years later, Patrick is an industrial laborer on the construction site of the waterworks under Lake Ontario. He lives among working-class immigrant communities, which welcome him even though he cannot speak their languages. He is invited to a political theater performance, where he witnesses a life-size “human puppet” banging on the floor (117). Finding this an unbearable sight, he leaps onstage to stop it. Upon doing so, he discovers the puppet is a woman—Alice Gull. Alice introduces Patrick to her nine-year-old daughter, Hana, whose deceased father was a political activist. Alice and Patrick become partners and live together with Hana. Patrick works for a time at a tannery. Hana introduces Patrick to Nicholas Temelcoff, the proprietor of her favorite bakery (and the protagonist of Chapter 2). Gradually piecing together evidence from keepsakes that Hana shows him, Patrick realizes that Alice is the nun who fell from the Bloor Street Viaduct—whose remains were never found. Patrick is awestruck at the beautiful coincidence of these disparate stories finally connecting. Alice’s tragic death is foreshadowed; it’s later revealed that she was killed in a dynamite accident.

Driven to insanity by grief over Alice’s untimely death, Patrick becomes an arsonist, targeting the wealthy. He is eventually caught and imprisoned for an attack on a luxury hotel. In prison, he meets the Caravaggio, an Italian immigrant and professional thief. Patrick helps Caravaggio escape prison. After Patrick is released from prison, he returns to Toronto and reunites with Hana. They receive a call from Clara, who reveals that Ambrose has died and asks them to drive out to get her in Marmora. (The reader now understands that the man and girl in the prologue are Patrick and Hana.)

Caravaggio and Patrick, now both out of prison, form a criminal alliance along with Caravaggio’s wife, Giannetta. The three hatch a plan to infiltrate a yacht club party, to manipulate a wealthy couple into inviting them onto their boat, to commandeer that boat, and to navigate to the waterworks so that Patrick can break into the plant by swimming through the tunnels. Patrick makes the harrowing journey in darkness, injuring himself severely along the way, but he ultimately makes it to the office of Commissioner Harris, the chief of this construction project as well as the mastermind of the Bloor Street Viaduct. Patrick has brought packs of dynamite, which he plans to detonate, destroying the waterworks and taking untold lives. Patrick confronts Harris, but Harris succeeds in subduing him, preventing him from detonating the explosives. Harris mercifully arranges for Patrick to be let go, unpunished for his crime.

The novel concludes with Patrick and Hana starting their drive to meet Clara in Marmora. Patrick begins to tell Hana his story.