The English Patient

A book that binds readers of great literature, The English Patient garnered 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.

Product Description
With unsettling beauty and intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an abandoned Italian villa at the end of World War II.

The nurse Hana, exhausted by death, obsessively tends to her last surviving patient. Caravaggio, the thief, tries to reimagine who he is, now that his hands are hopelessly maimed. The Indian sapper Kip searches for hidden bombs in a landscape where nothing is safe but himself. And at the center of his labyrinth lies the English patient, nameless and hideously burned, a man who is both a riddle and a provocation to his companions—and whose memories of suffering, rescue, and betrayal illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning.

If there is one note that Ondaatje consistently strikes through the novel it is the false one. I may be the only person I know who thought The English Patient was a better movie than Fargo, but the book is deeply flawed. Consider the following. The crucial love triangle at the core of the novel consists of three archaeologists, a Hungarian aristocrat and an English couple. They spend much of the thirties wandering around Libya which appears largely as exotic desert where great monuments are buried under the desert wastes. No mention is made of the fact that people actually live in Libya, and that in the twenties and thirties where the novel takes place, Libya was a victim of horrendous Italian aggression as Mussolini slaughtered tens of thousands of people fighting for their independence.

Likewise consider the moral dilemma that arises when the Hungarian Count de Almasy gets entangled with the Nazis. A better writer would note Hungary's authoritarian and anti-semitic political culture, and the fact that Hungary was Germany's ally in the Second World war. Likewise would a crack thief like Caravaggio really wander around naked in carrying out a job? One suspects that Ondaatje just thought that the image was evocative. Finally Kip, the Sikh bomb expert who has an affair with Hana at the end of the novel angrily leaves the British Army in outrage over Hiroshima, saying that the Allies would never have treated a white city like that. The problem is not the outrage. The problem is that during Kip's tenure in the army, the British had imprisoned Gandhi and Nehru, suppressed the 1942 Quit India movement, caused a disastrous famine in the Bengal costing millions of lives, had committed a large number of imperialist and selfish acts which can be seen in the works of Christopher Thorne, and, incidentally, had bombed Dresden to ashes. That Kip should be upset NOW begs the question. The problem is that Kip does not think like an Indian soldier, but like his author and his audience who no doubt heard of Hiroshima first and learned of the rest much later if at all. Indeed were it not for the fact that Ondaatje is a Sri-Lankan-Canadian writer, one might say that the English Patient was a classic work of orientalism.


A poetic tale of four haunted lives   October 8, 2003
Debbie Lee Wesselmann (the Lehigh Valley, PA)
35 out of 36 found this review helpful

Set at the end of World War II in an Italian villa, The English Patient brings together four unlikely characters: Hana, an emotionally-wounded army nurse who refuses to leave her last patient even when ordered to evacuate; Caravaggio, a friend of Hana's father, thief and spy, a man who is drawn to Hana in ways he cannot articulate; Kip, an Indian sapper loyal to the British military who disarms bombs by day, loves Hana by night; and the mysterious burned invalid, the English patient of the title, who unites them all in unexpected ways. Told in poetic, often elliptical language, this novel demands to be savored instead of read voraciously. The images are just as likely to be visually precise as they are inexplicable. Unlike the movie, which concentrates on the love story between the English patient and the woman he loved, the novel is more about the confusing impulses that lead to both passion and danger in all the characters.

Serious readers of literature should read this novel more than once, for its subtleties, imagery, and the force of its lyricism. More casual readers may find it tough reading, not because the language is inaccessible but because of the way Ondaatje backs into his story. Those who stick with the author's poetic turns will be well-rewarded by the end.


"That night I fell in love with a voice. Only a voice."   September 5, 1999
22 out of 28 found this review helpful

The English Patient written by Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje's stunning novel takes place as the Second World War is ending. The author creates four unforgettable characters and brings them together in an abandoned and damaged Italian villa as the war retreats around them. It is their lives and memories that "The English Patient" follows and explores.

Hana is a young Canadian nurse and her late father's friend, Caravaggio, is a professional thief and Allied spy who was brutally maimed during the war. Kip, a Sikh "sapper", lives on the edge of death in the fields of bomb disposal.

And the central force around which the action spins is the mysterious title character - the English Patient, the nameless, burnt victim who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminates the book.

They are all fascinated by this dying man, burnt beyond recognition and who refuses to unveil his name or country of origin. His story, set in the deserts of North Africa, unfolds through a series of flashbacks taking place in the abandoned villa. Through the rest of the novel, Hana, Caravaggio and Kip try to discover his true identity while he tells them stories of his past.

"The English Patient" is fabulous. It is all very poetic, the plot, the descriptions. It transforms your view of the world, turning it into a glorious, magical place that does not exist or does it? The author I read on the inside of the cover was first a poet and then became a novelist. And this novel is filled with page upon page of poetry, though it is written in novel form. "The English Patient" is perhaps the most beautiful novel I have ever read.

When I started to read the book I was a bit surprised that it was written in a third person. But later I discovered that the third person narrative voice make some kind of justice to all the characters.

Though I have to admit that it was not a very easy book to read. The author's language is lyrical and beautiful, but it requires an investment of energy from the reader especially from one whose mother tongue is not English. Sometimes the lyrical language like steels away your breath so that it becomes hard to follow the plot.

I strongly want to recommend this book and then trust me and take as long as you can to finish it. Discover every single phrase of it because it is worth it.

I want to end this book report with a sentence from the book. "That night I fell in love with a voice. Only a voice. I wanted to hear nothing more." This breathtaking sentence really hit me and stayed with me for several days.


REALLY!   March 9, 2000
21 out of 39 found this review helpful

Purple prose does not translate into either literature or poetry. This is the only book that actually made me physically ill. I could say a lot more but that would only be giving this book free advertising and that is something I definitely do NOT want to do!


The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje   May 16, 2000
heidi (Iowa, USA)
18 out of 23 found this review helpful

A BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN, SUSPENSEFUL ROMANCE NOVEL! After reading The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje, a booker-prize winning novel, you will finish the last chapter with a sense of triumph and passion for life. Written in 1992, this story takes place during World War II. A burned man, the English patient, finds refuge in an Italian villa where a compassionate nurse, Hanna, tends to his dying wishes. Through all of the scars and wounds readers will discover the lives of four mysterious people as they unravel and share the dangerous secrets of the past. Controlled by morphine, the English tells of his love and loss of his friends wife Katherine. We also learn that Hanna, the nurse, is discovering her own love, Kip. Clifton soon hears of his wife's, Katherine's, torrid love affair with the English patient. It baffles me to think that a more beautifully written novel of romance and betrayal could exist. There is, however, a movie that does serve it justice, The English Patient. Though I do recommend the movie, which won nine Academy awards, I do wish you'd read the book first. This book is for the romantics and those looking for a challenge. The characters being and details of their life are only brought about between the lines. This novel takes you through a series of lives, places , and event which are in no real chronological order. The outcome of events is revealed through such imagery and sometimes lack ther of, "They would carry a severed arm down a hall, or swab at blood that never stopped, as if the wound were a well, and they began to believe in nothing, trusted nothing." or "Blood. Tear. He feels everything is missing from his body, feels he contains smoke." The story also provides images in the desert and in the villa with life like qualities. The story also gives insight into the culture and lifestyles of the characters in that time period. An example of the difference in culture portrayed in the book was when one character had his thumbs removed as a punishment for commiting adultery. There are a few setbacks such as the confusing order of events. The story jumps from place to place and period to period. Overall, I strongly recommend this book for the romantic in all of us.