Featured on Between the Covers Big Jubilee Read
Winner of the Golden Man Booker 2018
Winner of the Booker Prize 1992
He lies flat on his back,no pillow,looking up at the foliage painted on to the ceiling,its canopy of branches,and above that,blue sky.
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. There they are joined by a mysterious thief named Caravaggio and an Indian sapper,nicknamed'Kip'. Each is wounded,lost,shattered.
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. As Hanna begins to form a passionate connection to Kip,her patient begins to weave his own stories from his fractured memories. Stories of his illicit,tempestuous affair with Katherine Clifton in a time before the war.
More than two decades after its release,The English Patient has become a classic of twentieth century literature; a poetic,lyrical examination of love's many possibilities,from the first whispers of desire to the lasting consequences of betrayal. An instant favourite with readers and critics alike - the Independent's reviewer called it'the best piece of fiction in English I've read in several years... throbbing with emotion and humanity'- it went on to inspire an Oscar-winning film,directed by Anthony Minghella.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLCISBN: 9781526605900Number of pages: 336Weight: 274 gDimensions: 198 x 129 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'The English Patient wears the triple crown: it is profound,beautiful and heart-quickening'- Toni Morrison
'All the allure of early twentieth-century desert exploration is contained in Ondaatje's beautiful,spare narrative...A wise and graceful book about history itself,both the events that are its raw material and the human values that shape it'- The Sunday Times
'Language of such riveting beauty that one is made to stop and stare'- The Observer
'One of the most innovative and liberating writers of our time'- The Guardian
'The best piece of fiction in English I've read in years'- The Independent on Sunday
'Ondaatje has now written the extraordinary novel we have been awaiting from him: The English Patient is a masterpiece'- The Financial Times
'An extraordinary novel-poetic,philosophical,moving...The English Patient has such a strange beauty that it requires and repays a reader's act of faith. It is such a thought-provoking piece of writing that one if forced to consider its achievement'- The Daily Telegraph
'An exotic,consuming and richly inspired novel of passion. In its elegance and its satisfactions it resembles no book I know'- Richard Ford
'Feats of daring espionage,aeroplanes mysteriously buried beneath desert sand,archaeological exploration in the Sahara and nail-biting accounts of bomb-disposal against a nervous clock...this is the real thing: muscular,resonant,alive'- The Spectator
'A magic carpet of a novel that soars across worlds and times...As rare and spellbinding net of dreams as any that has emerged in recent years'- Time
'In this masterful novel Ondaatje weaves a beautiful and light-handed prose through the histories of people caught up in love and war. A rich and compelling work of fiction'- Don DeLillo
'Ondaatje is one of North America's finest novelists...the spell of his haunted villa remains with us,inviting us to reread passages for the pure pleasures of being there'- The Wall Street Journal
'A tale of many pleasures-an intensely theatrical tour de force but grounded in Michael Ondaatje's strong feeling for distant times and places'-The New York Times Book Review
Michael Ondaatje
Born in Sri Lanka,author Michael Ondaatje moved to England as a child and then to Canada where he still lives today. A playwright,novelist,poet and author of non-fiction he is best-known for his 1992 novel The English Patient which was the joint winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film of the same name.
Visit the Michael Ondaatje author page
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