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The English Patient. [Paperback]

Michael. Ondaatje (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (232 customer reviews)

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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.
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Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, Brilliant May 19 2002
By richard_t
Format:Paperback
Ondaatje is a superb writer. The English Patient is a brilliant book. Ondaatje's genius is to reveal characters as people are revealed in life - not in linear chronological narratives, but in glimpes, flashes of lightning, disconnected anecdotes. Sometimes contradictory, always fascinating. The book takes the shape of these disparate images and recollections slowly coalescing to form four protagonists: Hana the Canadian nurse, Almasy the English Patient, Caravaggio the thief, and Kip the Sikh deminer. They are isolated from the world in a postwar Italian villa, each with subtle motives defined by Ondaatje's profound attention to detail.

The prose is evocative, like Almasy's comment on Kipling: to be read slowly and then reread. Images and scenes slowly take shape like a jigsaw puzzle. It is not until the final few pages that we finally learn what compels Hana to tend so devotedly to the mortally-burned English Patient, it is not until the final pages that Kip reviews his dedication to the British war cause. The characters' evolutions come slowly and naturally as Almasy's stories of the desert catalyze the entire book.

The movie is not this book. Read the book - it's brilliant.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Complex and Beautifully Written Jun 30 2012
By Debra Purdy Kong TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
Twenty-year-old Hana is living in an isolated villa outside Tuscany. It's 1945 and the Germans have retreated, leaving mines and burned-out buildings behind. Hana's nursing a badly burned man she calls the English patient, as his identity is unknown. She's later joined by a man named Caravaggio, an older friend of the family, and Kirpal Singh, a young military engineer who defuses bombs for a living. These four exist without electricity, little running water, and large holes in ceiling and walls, yet none of them seem overly eager to leave. In fact, each character seems almost complacent about their living arrangement, but why?

This beautifully written book is about physical, emotional, and psychological isolation due, in large part to war, yet there's more to it than that. Slowly, truths and motives are unraveled, as each character comes to terms with past and present. Interestingly, the future isn't considered much until the end, and this was problematic for me. One key question wasn't answered, (or if it was, it went right over my head) and after investing time to read 302 pages, the ending was a bit of a letdown.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Unfold it, it's worth it.... Jan 15 2002
By Marianne
Format:Paperback
This, as my teacher told us, is a novel one must reread every five years or so.
Not a quick or easy read, The English Patient one of those books written in language so distilled, so concentrated, that one phrase can be explicated for pages. Its images, many of which I do not yet understand and many of which I'm sure I missed this time through, slip in and out of your consciousness long after you've finished the novel. The effect is that of someone tugging gently on your sleeve and saying "hey, pay attention -- this is important, this is what meaning is made of."
The story is that of 4 characters who have come to inhabit a bombed-out, ruined and abandoned Italian villa towards the end of world war 2. With supreme skill as a storyteller, Ondaatje dips us into their pasts, so that we are made aware of their stories snapshot by snapshot; this is particularly true of the mysterious nameless faceless 'English patient', a severe burn victim with a deep, secretive history.
There is such power in this novel I'd like to bottle its spirit, its poetry and its beauty, and carry it with me. This book is IMPORTANT to me. I cannot say any more than that.
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Most recent customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Better than the movie. (And I NEVER say that.)
I read this in the early 90s because it was required in a university class. I'm REALLY thankful that my professor introduced me to this story. Read more
Published 17 months ago by David Sabine
5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful novel
I come late to reading award-winning author, Michael Ondaatje, and decided to discover his story-telling ability through a familiar tale, that of the award-winning film made from... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Lorina Stephens
4.0 out of 5 stars Allow the book to happen....
I just finished this book and I must say you can clearly see the author's poetical style in his prose. Read more
Published on Oct 7 2009 by Thom Jaskula
5.0 out of 5 stars Complicated, dense, poetic, erotic, wow, wow, wow!
Don't miss this - and don't miss the movie, either.
The English Patient is a completely enthralling novel of war, honor, romance, and courage. Read more
Published on Jun 12 2003 by Peggy Vincent
5.0 out of 5 stars Descriptions of Beauty
A beautifully written multi-layered story of love, loss, war, and sadness. Whether writing about the simple pleasures in life or the sorrow circumstances bring upon us Ondaatje... Read more
Published on Jun 2 2002
5.0 out of 5 stars Heartbreakingly Gorgeous
"The English Patient" is, without a doubt, one of my very favorite books. It is lush, beautiful and gorgeous. Read more
Published on April 12 2002
5.0 out of 5 stars Of Maps and Borders
Director Minghella may have had a lot to thank Ondaatje's writing for the inspired technical brilliance of the movie version of "The English Patient". Read more
Published on Mar 21 2002 by shobdobonik
4.0 out of 5 stars Seductive prose, but what's beyond?
A strange book, this novel. I read it twice in the space of a few years. On my first reading I was mesmerised by Ondaatje's beautifully suggestive prose and the ravishing exoticism... Read more
Published on Jan 20 2002 by Philippe Vandenbroeck
5.0 out of 5 stars This is a story about love above all
While the English Patient explores a panoramic story line - covering the deserts and bazaars, the ravages of World War II on two continents, the languid days and haunted nights -... Read more
Published on Oct 31 2001 by Megami
5.0 out of 5 stars Nothing Left To Say.....
I am reading this incredibly lyrical and emotionally complex novel with my high school students. Most of it, admittedly, is above their heads. Read more
Published on Oct 24 2001 by "mickasa"
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