Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #68020 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-02
• 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.

Guardian
'One of the most innovative and liberating writers of our time'

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

Customer Reviews

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.

Sublime.
I picked this book up after watching the film on television, and read it in a day.
The English Patient is not only the story of the burned "English Patient" and his tragic love affair with the wife of a colleague, but the stories of Hana, a nurse who is caring for him, a crippled thief, David Caravaggio, and a Sikh, Kip, who is part of a bomb-disposal unit, drawn together in an old bombed hospital in Italy.
The story switches between these characters; we are allowed into the minds of all of them, and hear their stories. The book is written in beautiful, evocative prose, reading almost like a poem rather than a novel, but never descending into the region of overly descriptiveness and boring the reader.
As for a comparison to the film; I think it's much more interesting. For a start, there isn't so much focus on the love affair between Almasy and Katherine Clifton; we are allowed to see much deeper into the stories of the other characters.
In short, the prose is breathtakingly beautiful, and is held together by an entertaining and emotional plot. If you have not read this book already, do so.

A beautiful book
See the film, but do read the book, as both are just magnificent.
I especially like the character, Kip. the Indian sapper, who listens to music while defusing bombs: 'Noise did not matter. There would be no faint tickings or clickings to signal danger on this kind of bomb. The distraction of music helped him towards clear thought, to the possible forms of structure in the mine, to the personality that had laid the city of threads and then poured wet concrete over it'.

There is so much in this book: Romance; the beauty of the desert; a spy story; archaeology; and much more below the surface.