The English Patient

Michael Ondaatje

Language: English

Published: Jan 2, 2011

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. The international bestseller and winner of the 1992 Booker Prize Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka and lives in Toronto. The English Patient won the Booker Prize in 1992 and was made into an Oscar-winning film directed by Anthony Minghella.

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 lightening.From the Hardcover edition.

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. The international bestseller and winner of the 1992 Booker Prize Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka and lives in Toronto. The English Patient won the Booker Prize in 1992 and was made into an Oscar-winning film directed by Anthony Minghella.