Product Description

The final curtain is closing on the Second World War, and Hana, a nurse, stays behind in an abandoned Italian villa to tend to her only remaining patient. Rescued by Bedouins from a burning plane, he is English, anonymous, damaged beyond recognition and haunted by his memories of passion and betrayal. The only clue Hana has to his past is the one thing he clung on to through the fire? a copy of The Histories by Herodotus, covered with hand-written notes describing a painful and ultimately tragic love affair.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14468 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Haunting and harrowing, as beautiful as it is disturbing, The English Patient tells the story of the entanglement of four damaged lives in an Italian monastery as the second world war ends. The exhausted nurse, Hana; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burn victim who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of sheet lightning. In lyrical prose informed by a poetic consciousness, Michael Ondaatje weaves these characters together, pulls them tight, then unravels the threads with unsettling acumen.

A book that binds readers of great literature, The English Patient secured the Booker Prize for author Ondaatje. The poet and novelist has also written In the Skin of a Lion, Coming Through Slaughter and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid; two collections of poems, The Cinnamon Peeler and There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do; and a memoir, Running in the Family.

Review
'One of the most innovative and liberating writers of our time' Guardian 'Magnificent A wise and graceful book about history itself' Sunday Times 'The best piece of fiction in English I've read in years' Independent on Sunday 'Ondaatje has now written the extraordinary novel we have been awaiting from him: THE ENGLISH PATIENT is a masterpiece' Financial Times

Independent on Sunday
'The best piece of fiction in English I've read in years'

Customer Reviews

Utterly absorbing.
This is a beautifully written book with timeless appeal and I can't recommend it highly enough. The English Patient draws the reader into a world that after a while appears to consist of only four people as they learn to love and live with each other. Each character adds another dimension to the microcosm created in a secluded Italian villa, but set against the vividly described past lives of the patient himself and his new companions. Having watched the film many years ago I was intrigued to see how the book differed. Ondaatje's rich and poetic language was thoroughly absorbing and now I find the film doesn't really do it justice. If you have seen the film and weren't impressed, please don't be put off as this book is one of the best I've read in a long time.

Poetry as prose
This is one of the most beautiful books ever written. I dipped into it recently (having read it twice on the past several years) and the quality and beauty of the prose left me staggered at what can be done with the English language. The descriptions put you right into the location with the characters, from Kip in a crater defusing a bomb, to the eponymous patient in the desert.

One of the cleverest things about it is the way that we become acquainted with the characters as they would have got to know one another: in fits and starts, without chronology. They are built up layer by layer, incident by incident. They become visible in the mind's eye. Not only that, but we see the world through their eyes: the image of Kip lighting flares and swinging in space to look at the paintings inside the domes of churches is magical - and I'm not sure Ondaatje could have written it had he not come at Western culture from the East, born as he was into the Ceylon Burgher community.

The plot is complex, the characters are complex, the prose is amongst the best you will ever read. Now and then the switches of time and location will leave you gasping, as you turn the page expecting to read more about one of the characters, only to find yourself dropped into another part of the story.

The only thing that puzzled me was the persistent survival of the patient: that anyone so badly burned could survive so long seems illogical. Aside from that, I thought it was a perfect book about loss and longing, and written with almost implausible talent and skill. Ondaatje is a poet as well as a novelist, and that is very obvious in the pages of this story.

not bad, nothing like the film though.
I watched the film and thought it was brilliant so I read the book and was disappointed. It is written beautifully but it was just so different to what I expected.

SPOILERS

The main story is all about Kip, then Hana and then their relationship, the actual English patient features very little throughout the book to the point that I was wondering why the book is called The English Patient. His relationship with Katherine only takes up a few pages.

It is a good book and I liked the story but if you've seen the film first, don't expect much of it to be in this book. I actually prefered the film.