The English Patient

by Michael Ondaatje

tagged: literary, historical, classics

Description

With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal,and rescue illuminates this book like flashes of heat lightning.

About the Author

Michael Ondaatje

Excerpt

She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance. She has sensed a shift in the weather. There is another gust of wind, a buckle of noise in the air, and the tall cypresses sway. She turns and moves uphill toward the house, climbing over a low wall, feeling the first drops of rain on her bare arms. She crosses the loggia and quickly enters the house.

In the kitchen she doesn't pause but goes through it and climbs the stairs which are in darkness and then continues along the long hall, at the end of which is a wedge of light from an open door.

She turns into the room which is another garden--this one made up of trees and bowers painted over its walls and ceiling. The man lies on the bed, his body exposed to the breeze, and he turns his head slowly towards her as she enters.

Every four days she washes his black body, beginning at the destroyed feet. She wets a washcloth and holding it above his ankles squeezes the water onto him, looking up as he murmurs, seeing his smile. Above the shins the burns are worst. Beyond purple. Bone.

She has nursed him for months and she knows the body well, the penis sleeping like a sea horse, the thin tight hips. Hipbones of Christ, she thinks. He is her despairing saint. He lies flat on his back, no pillow, looking up at the foliage painted onto the ceiling, its canopy of branches, and above that, blue sky.

She pours calamine in stripes across his chest where he is less burned, where she can touch him. She loves the hollow below the lowest rib, its cliff of skin. Reaching his shoulders she blows cool air onto his neck, and he mutters.

What? she asks, coming out of her concentration.

He turns his dark face with its gray eyes towards her. She puts her hand into her pocket. She unskins the plum with her teeth, withdraws the stone and passes the flesh of the fruit into his mouth.

He whispers again, dragging the listening heart of the young nurse beside him to wherever his mind is, into that well of memory he kept plunging into during those months before he died.

Contributor Notes

MICHAEL ONDAATJE is the author of many novels, a memoir, a nonfiction book on film, and several books of poetry. The English Patient won the Booker Prize in 1992 and the Golden Man Booker in 2018; Anil’s Ghost won the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Prix Médicis. In 2016, he was appointed Companion of the Order of Canada. Born in Sri Lanka, he now lives in Toronto.

Awards

Winner, Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award - Author of the Year
Winner, Man Booker Prize
Winner, Governor General's Literary Awards - Fiction

Editorial Review

WINNER OF THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION (1992)
WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE (1992)
WINNER OF THE GOLDEN MAN BOOKER (2018)
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

“The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje wears the triple crown: it is profound, beautiful and heart-quickening.” —Toni Morrison, author of Beloved

“The English Patient is one of the finest Canadian novels ever written.” —The Globe and Mail
“The words brilliant and beautiful have often been used to describe Michael Ondaatje’s writing. . . . The English Patient artfully blends history with mirage, doomed love affairs with the bloodiness of war, and the real with the surreal to brew a novel that is rich, shadowy and haunting.” —Vancouver Sun

“A staggering achievement.” —Calgary Herald

“A stunning tour de force of fine writing. With great skill and unmistakable compassion, Ondaatje weaves the mingled histories of his protagonists into a rich tapestry. Inventive, original and beautifully rendered.” —The London Free Press
“Some writers have an ear for the language; others have an eye for the land. Michael Ondaatje possesses both these qualities, and he also has something much rarer: an extraordinary gift for evoking the sense of touch. To read him is to feel alive in your skin.” —The Gazette (Montreal)
“He has enveloped the reader in a rare and spellbinding web of dreams . . . He has fashioned a magic carpet of a novel that soars across worlds and time.” —Pico Iyer, TIME
“Ondaatje’s novel about love and confusion set at the end of the Second World War follows a small group of shell-shocked characters. In descriptive prose of spectacular beauty, he invents a desert world which is both physical and imaginative. This is one of the few truly great post-war novels.” —The Irish Times
“A beautifully written, compelling novel.” —The Wall Street Journal

“There are books that change the shape of literature. . . . The English Patient is such a book.” —Books in Canada
“A narrative of astonishing elegance and power . . . It should be recognized as one of the finest novels of recent years—large, rich and profoundly wise.” —Mirabella

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The English Patient

by Michael Ondaatje

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