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The English Patient

3.84 of 5 stars 3.84 · rating details · 49,891 ratings · 1,971 reviews

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 ro...more

Paperback, 305 pages

Published August 27th 1993 by Vintage Canada (first published September 1st 1992)

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Jan 16, 2012 Cassy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: physical-own, 2011, event-met-author, fiction-general, region-europe, region-africa

I am just going to fess up. This book was too literary and depressing for my tastes or, at least, for my mood when I started. Ondaatje offered beautiful descriptions, insightfulness, and a profound melancholy. Yet I found myself trudging through this one, propelled forward only by his up-coming visit to Houston.

Given his picture on the jacket cover, highfaluting writing style, and acclaimed career, I expected him to be pretentious. To the contrary, he was charming during the on-stage interview....more I am just going to fess up. This book was too literary and depressing for my tastes or, at least, for my mood when I started. Ondaatje offered beautiful descriptions, insightfulness, and a profound melancholy. Yet I found myself trudging through this one, propelled forward only by his up-coming visit to Houston.

Given his picture on the jacket cover, highfaluting writing style, and acclaimed career, I expected him to be pretentious. To the contrary, he was charming during the on-stage interview. (He actually reminded me of E.L. Doctorow.) I enjoyed hearing him read out loud from his new book, The Cat's Table, during which he elicited a few good chuckles from the crowd. And it was cute when he described copy editing as the most humiliating experience for an author. “Everything is wrong!”

One critic describes Ondaatje as a “novelist with the heart of a poet” and that’s really telling. His first four works were poetry. When he switched to prose, he wanted to maintain that suggestiveness, that restraint, that vagueness. To start a novel, he requires very little: a period of time, landscape, and a hint of a character or two. (And contrary to rumors, he doesn’t go and live at a book’s location. He may just visit briefly.) Thereafter, he doesn’t like to fill his head with research. He jokingly called himself an inaccurate researcher and warned us to not depend on him to defuse bomb. (A character from this book was an expert at bomb disposal.)

The shame I felt sitting in the audience! There Ondaatje had been, graciously giving me space in his world. He invited me to engage with the text in my own way. I could paint the rest of the picture. I was encouraged to pause and ruminate on this or that genius nugget at my leisure. And what did I do? I whined about the remote characters and lack of plot. The characters were recovering from a disastrous war – of course, I couldn’t relate to them! How I have been ruined by urban fantasy shit!

Oh well.

Once the interview concluded, I was ambivalent about getting my book signed for a variety of reasons. It had been a long day at work. It was a three-star book. And more importantly, the line was 70 people long and growing. Alas, my friend, Jen wanted get hers signed and I agreed to accompany her. I was mentally estimating a good thirty minutes standing around in my high heels. But once Ondaatje sat down at the signing table, that line moved like lightning! It wasn’t until I got up there that I realized why. He wasn’t talking to anyone. Everyone’s murmurings (I love your work, yada yada yada) went unanswered. Sign book, nod, sign next book, nod. It saved me the trouble of pretending more enthusiasm for his book than I felt and I can understand how tedious these book tours must have become for him. Still, Ondaatje, come on! (less)

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Jan 31, 2009 Margot Jennifer rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The English Patient is an illuminating novel written by Michael Ondaatje, who tells the story of four damaged lives tangled together at the end of World War II. The story involves characters like: the melancholy, childlike nurse Hana; the emotionally and physically maimed thief, Caravaggio; the pensive and wary Indian bomb-disposal expert, Kip; and the burnt and broken English patient, a mysterious wounded soul without a name. The story revolves around several major themes such as: war and the p...more The English Patient is an illuminating novel written by Michael Ondaatje, who tells the story of four damaged lives tangled together at the end of World War II. The story involves characters like: the melancholy, childlike nurse Hana; the emotionally and physically maimed thief, Caravaggio; the pensive and wary Indian bomb-disposal expert, Kip; and the burnt and broken English patient, a mysterious wounded soul without a name. The story revolves around several major themes such as: war and the paradigm shift that takes place as cultures and people recover from such; love and the depths one will go to to acquire it; and the illusive but essential search for self-identity. The themes stretch across all aspects of human nature, but it is the development of self that receives the most attention. Ondaatje brings you into a transformative exploration of identity through multiple layering of meaning in each description. The author does this by drawing you far into the fantasy by luscious, sensuous elucidations. This book is not merely a thing to be read on an intellectual level. The book is to be sensed and physically processed, as you filter through smokey comprehension and hazy daydreams.
The book is a web of memories, and if you are expecting a linear story, you may be discouraged by the nonconformity to typical plot lines. The book weaves back and forth as memories reveal themselves into a tapestry of dream-like narratives. Ondaatje’s novel is a quilt of a story, much like the English patient's stitched together copy of Herodotus. The web of narrative is displayed much like how Hana reads to her patient from the books she tiptoes out of the library. She opens randomly to any page and begins reading. The plots of the stories are irrelevant to Hana and the English patient. The relevance for them lies in the moment, in the singular experiences that combine to make up the whole. The English Patient should be read on this level. Ondaatje says that he doesn’t know what his books are about until he finishes writing them. You may not completely understand what the book is about until you are done reading it, and even then the story changes and evolves as your own identity transforms. Very few books take you through this kind of self-discovery and leave you with a new awareness of the corporeal.
The book is a sensual journey that must be taken step by step, yet it is without a beginning or an ending point. The relevance of Ondaatje’s message is destroyed by constantly looking at the horizon to find the end of the road. And what is the message? For many it is the examination of self through poetically saturated text that the author employs to evoke personal discovery. The book brings up many questions to its watery surface for you to find answers to. For much of the text, the question you’ll be asking yourself is “Who is the English Patient”? For most of the narration you have no idea who this burned shadow of a man is. He seems to be a reminder of desperation and betrayal, pain and lost love, but this is not the story the author wants you to focus on. The English patient is merely a catalyst for the other characters, and you as well, to discover identity. Without him, the others would never have been able to interlace their stories and find understanding and comfort in each other.

This is a novel of revelation, and just as the identity of the English patient is slowly revealed as the novel progresses, so too are the inner selves and spiritual identities of the other characters in the novels. Every sentence is beautifully crafted and evocative, keeping you completely enthralled in the story. The story reaches across all boundaries of time and space to connect with people from all walks of life. Each of us who reads the story as the author intended, will find many connections with the story and its characters.
The text begins with Hana and the English patient living alone in a bombed out and abandoned hospital/monastery. From this location, all other places in the story are visited through memories and often painful recollections. Hana cares for both herself and her patient by keeping a simple garden and trading medical supplies for their other physical needs. For their intellectual needs she reads passages from odd books found in the possibly mined library. Throughout the story, Hana represents the scarred, insecure child in each of us; afraid to move beyond our sphere of comfort, but whimsical and playful within it. Hana cares for her patient as a substitute for how she would like to be cared for. She wants desperately to be wrapped and held and whispered to, and she does this vicariously through her patient, caring for him like he was a small frightened child in need of comfort. Yet, the English patient does not need this kind of comfort from Hana. The English patient no longer needs solace from others. He represents the resolve that the broken and tired have, who no longer have a choice in what they are given, and who can accept the circumstances without challenging them. He realizes that it’s the journey that gives birth to his identity and the means by which it ends is inconsequential. The duo is presently joined by a old friend of Hana’s father. The friend is Caravaggio, a thief and a morphine addict. The confused and wounded Caravaggio comes to find Hana as he looks for ties to the past and clues to his confused identity. The thief typifies most of us, who are somehow maimed whether physically or emotionally, who need to piece back the severed parts of our identities to make a new whole. Finally they are joined by Kip, the diviner, never looking at what is in front of his eyes, always searching through the layers beneath. He is afraid of connection and of loss. He is constantly aware of the dangers around him and therefore cannot appreciate the simple pleasures and safety nets of relationships. Many who have been afflicted with great loss and insecurity can identify with this character.
Ondaatje’s work draws many parallels to our own quest for self-awareness and our desire for peace with the past. The book is an examination of the nature of identity. Who are we when our world is torn apart? Who are we when our names are taken from us? Who are we when we no longer can be identified by our physical characteristics? Are we what other people make of us? Ondaatje doesn’t give you the answers, he gives you the questions and leads you lyrically through the journey of others on the same mission so that you may discover the answer for yourself. Ondaatje’s work is organic and alive. It will change your self-perception and gives charge to electrical pulses of discovery as you allow it to guide the form of your ever-changing identity.

*contains sexual material and swearing(less)

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Dec 18, 2012 Henry Avila rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Who really is the English Patient?Brought to a mountain villa, outside of Florence Italy, after being rescued in the deserts of Libya, by Bedouins. Burnt badly in a plane crash, Hana, a young Canadian nurse, takes care of the "Englishman" .She falls in love with this sad enigma.Set in the closing days of the second world war.The nurse refuses to leave with the other doctors and nurses, when the conflict heads north.She believes the patient will not survive , the move. Enter David Caravaggio, an...more

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Jul 19, 2007 Adam rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, booker-prize

The English Patient is one of my least favorite novels of all time. Michael Ondaatje's prose is the literary equivalent of having a gossamer skein repeatedly thrown over your face and then dragged away; fleeting and insubstantial, but just present enough to be really fucking annoying. Also, his dialogue sucks. People in the 1940s absolutely did not speak the way Ondaatje has them speaking. This novel won the Booker Prize in 1992, an award which was, for some God-unknown reason, split with Barry...more

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Sep 17, 2011 ·Karen· rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: canada

Well I managed to finish it this time. But it aint going on my favourites shelf I'm afraid. Yes, yes, it's lush and lyrical and majestic in its rhythms, multi-layered and melancholic, sensual and brutal, full of searingly beautiful images that burn themselves into the mind's eye, yes, all of that. Obviously it is a masterpiece, I'm told that at every turn, and I cannot deny it.
Now for the 'but' - or indeed 'buts'. I was most troubled by Hana and Caravaggio - the first time I tried to read this...more Well I managed to finish it this time. But it aint going on my favourites shelf I'm afraid. Yes, yes, it's lush and lyrical and majestic in its rhythms, multi-layered and melancholic, sensual and brutal, full of searingly beautiful images that burn themselves into the mind's eye, yes, all of that. Obviously it is a masterpiece, I'm told that at every turn, and I cannot deny it.
Now for the 'but' - or indeed 'buts'. I was most troubled by Hana and Caravaggio - the first time I tried to read this I couldn't get them at all. This time I had recently read In The Skin of a Lion so I thought I knew who they were. Or did I? The names are the same but do they really have any true connection with the characters in the previous book? Is there any significance to their having being somewhere else and now here, or could Hana have just been any nurse? Just a nurse? What is Caravaggio doing there? In fact I wondered if he was only there as a device to get the English patient's story out of him and fill in the other side of the story. A bit of a clumsy device. But what is Caravaggio's role otherwise?
Then I listened to the BBC World Book Club discussion with Ondaatje (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/spe...) and found that my impression was perhaps not entirely off the mark. He admits that when he finished In The Skin of a Lion he felt great regret at leaving the characters he had grown fond of. When he came to start the book that became The English Patient, he wondered if the nurse might be Hana, a Hana who had grown older and changed, so not exactly the same person as before. And he admits there is a risk in recycling characters like that, in that the author may not always participate fully in their creation. And I think there's the rub. The English patient's back story is wondrous and fascinating, and Kip, for me, becomes the central figure in the whole story, but Hana remains a cipher, and Caravaggio fades to nothing. Which is a bit disconcerting. It makes it a bit diffuse, there's a troubling imbalance at the centre. Because the sheer majesty of the language makes you feel that everything must be significant, surely?
The narrator adds to the feeling of slippage and dislocation too. On one hand this narrator is all-seeing and all-knowing, follows all his figures wherever they are, slips into and out of different points of view with ease and grace. But then he suddenly pulls back: "How much she is in love with him or he with her we don't know." (p.127) Who is this 'we' all of a sudden?
As I say, Kip, for me, was the real fascination. The questions of empire and nationhood, loyalty, family, identity, race, war, betrayal, the power of poetry and the written word to bring worlds into being. The big themes. They just took rather a while to really take off.(less)

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Jan 09, 2012 Shovelmonkey1 rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books, africa, bookcrossing-books, booker-prize-winner, read-in-2010

This is the book that made me want to run away to Cairo in the 1940s and have an affair with one of the displaced European aristocracy. The only thing that's currently preventing this is the human races inability to perfect the art of time travel. Curses! But once that small hurdle has been removed, I'll be off. This book appealed to me on many levels:

Deserts and far flung foreign travel - tick
Hidden subterranean archaeology - tick
Enigmatic European aristocracy - tick
Spell binding tale of fate c...more

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Oct 14, 2008 Colin Miller rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Fans of penis "sleeping like a sea horse" descriptions

Shelves: novels, cant-remember-well-enough-to-review

Everyone hates at least one classic. Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient was the book that first did it for me.

I’m not always fair when it comes to one-star reviews, but if I’m stopping shy of anonymous Amazon slams I figure I’m not doing all that bad. Still, I’ll try to be as fair as possible to The English Patient.

The novel is set in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. The nameless English patient is a burned invalid who unites the other characters—his worn out nurse, Hana; the ma...more

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Feb 24, 2008 Idle Hippo rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-to-movies, fiksi

Pelajaran moral dari buku ini adalah...

Jangan coba-coba mengganggu istri orang, apalagi statusnya masih penganten baru, apalagi kalo ketahuan suaminya! (meski affair-nya sudah berakhir) Runyam dah (dua kali jatoh dari pesawat!) Hehehe

The desert could not be claimed or owned--it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names long before Canterbury existed, long before battles and treaties quilted Europe and the East. Its caravans, those strang...more

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Dec 04, 2008 Saman added it · review of another edition

Shelves: novel

يكي از دل‌مشغولي‌هايم در زندگي فيلم ديدن است(البته سينما نمي‌روم و علاقه‌اي ندارم). در ميان فيلم‌هاي كه به شدت دوست دارم و خوش مي‌دارمشان همين فيلم (بيمار انگليسي) است. روايتي كه كارگردان مرحوم اين فيلم(آنتوني مينگلا) از رمان مايكل اوندات) به تصوير كشيد بسيار ستودني‌ست. (آنتوني مينگلا) پيش و پس از اين اثر فيلم‌هاي ديگري ساهت اما هنوز كه هنوز است او را با اين شاهكارش مي‌شناسند و من وقتي چيزي، كسي، شيئي را خيلي دوست دارم واقعاً نمي‌توانم درباره‌اش صحبت بكنم؛ چرا كه كلامي كه بتوانم براي آن حسي كه د...more يكي از دل‌مشغولي‌هايم در زندگي فيلم ديدن است(البته سينما نمي‌روم و علاقه‌اي ندارم). در ميان فيلم‌هاي كه به شدت دوست دارم و خوش مي‌دارمشان همين فيلم (بيمار انگليسي) است. روايتي كه كارگردان مرحوم اين فيلم(آنتوني مينگلا) از رمان مايكل اوندات) به تصوير كشيد بسيار ستودني‌ست. (آنتوني مينگلا) پيش و پس از اين اثر فيلم‌هاي ديگري ساهت اما هنوز كه هنوز است او را با اين شاهكارش مي‌شناسند و من وقتي چيزي، كسي، شيئي را خيلي دوست دارم واقعاً نمي‌توانم درباره‌اش صحبت بكنم؛ چرا كه كلامي كه بتوانم براي آن حسي كه در وجودم دارم پيدا نمي‌كنم. اين فيم به فارسي نيز دوبله شده است و دو نفر از محبوب‌ترين دوبلورهاي به شدت مورد علاقه‌ام(چنگيز جليلوند و مرحوم ژاله كاظمي نيز به جاي بازيگر بسيار مورد علاقه‌ي من "كريستين اسكات توماس") به صدا پيشگي مي‌پردازند و اين هم مزيدي مي‌شود بر همه‌ي علاقه‌ي من به اين فيلم مي‌شود

اين فيلم توانست 9 اسكار و 41 جايزه از جشنواره‌هاي ديگر كسب كند و در به شهرت رساندن رمان اين اثر تأثير غير قابل كتماني داشته باشد.
اسكار بهترين فيلم سال 1996
اسكار بهترين كارگرداني
اسكار بهترين فيلم‌برداري
اسكار بهترين تدوين
اسكار بهترين موسيقي اوريژينال
و اسكار بهترين بازيگر زن از جوايزي بود كه اين فيلم كسب كرد.

لينكش را در پايين مي‌گذارم
http://imdb.com/title/tt0116209
(less)

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Jun 13, 2011 Melissa Jackson rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is a slow moving dream-- like a great, surrounding poem. The language is unbelievably sensual and the story is like nothing you'll ever read. It is thick with emotion and description. Although somewhat laborious at parts, it's altogether disassembling (to quote the author). It takes you into the raw bleeding heart of Almasy and never lets go. It made me want to die....and then be re-born and read it again. I could not ever express how much I love love love this book.

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Apr 28, 2008 emily rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

so i just re-read this. i picked it up b/c we were going camping and i needed a paperback and all my library books were big fat honkin ones...

it struck me totally differently this time. sucks to the english patient and his ladypal, kip singh is the one for me. i'm about to watch the movie again and i know i'm gonna be furious at how they totally leave out all the important parts about kip. i heart righteous fury. i heart kip.

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Jan 31, 2013 Kungfu Panda rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Do you understand the sadness of geography?"

~(From a letter Hana writes to her stepmother)

There are some, nay, *rare* books that pull you in effortlessly into themselves. It's like stepping onto a patch of quicksand, it is difficult to extricate yourself once you are in it, and you would not want to. One page into it, and the reader is dead to the outside world, resurrection is painful. Authors like Ondaatje, have a style that is unique in the way that they dont have to labor too much into sett...more "Do you understand the sadness of geography?"

~(From a letter Hana writes to her stepmother)

There are some, nay, *rare* books that pull you in effortlessly into themselves. It's like stepping onto a patch of quicksand, it is difficult to extricate yourself once you are in it, and you would not want to. One page into it, and the reader is dead to the outside world, resurrection is painful. Authors like Ondaatje, have a style that is unique in the way that they dont have to labor too much into setting a stage, give you elaborate descriptions of the background or the milieu or use too many words to give their characters a personality. Or perhaps, they are successful in contriving that illusion. Like Coetzee or Hemingway.
To say that the book is well written or that Ondaatje is a great author would do no good and convey no real information, if it is a review that you have in mind. It is redundant and it is vain. This is one reason I am apprehensive with the idea of daring to write a formal review, for frankly speaking, I don't feel qualified.
When Milan Kundera published "The Joke", some writers and intellectuals probably from the left camp, said it was a critique of Stalinism given the description of the conditions of work, social life and the deportation of dissidents to gulas and what not in the novel. Kundera, interrupted saying, “Spare me your Stalinism, 'The Joke' is a love story". Obviously, they had missed the point or points. It is easy to fall into the same trap with this book when classifying it into a genre.

*SPOILER ALERT*

It is world war 2, a young woman takes care of a burn victim in the Villa San Girolamo, north of Florence, Italy. A mystical Englishman whose features, charred beyond recognition is a most magical character, a 'reservoir of information'. Who is he? Then there is David Carravagio an Italian from Canada, a thief, a semi-spy, whose thumbs have been amputated by the germans so he may no longer use his skills.
And then surprisingly, there is an Indian Sikh Sardar from Punjab of all places, 'Kip'.
Then there is Hana. A character, Ondaatje himself gives up on, in the end.

"Read slowly girl, you must read Kipling slowly. Watch carefully where the commas fall so you can discover the natural pauses. He is a writer who used pen and ink. He looked up from the page a lot, I believe, stared through his windows and listened to birds, as most writers who are alone do. Some do not know the names of the birds, though he did. Your eye is too quick and North American. Think about the speed of his pen. What an appalling barnacled paragraph it is otherwise."(less)

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Sep 04, 2012 Callista rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature-esd, contemp-pop-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This has been on my to-read list since the late '90s, but I hadn't made it a high priority, somewhat intimidated by things I'd heard. There's a vague memory of one of my more readerly friends warning me not to read it, deeming it impossible. I haven't gotten around to watching the film, either. But lately, I've been going to the library and browsing the shelves (instead of going with a particular book in mind and getting disappointed if it's checked out), and I decided to finally pick this up. H...more This has been on my to-read list since the late '90s, but I hadn't made it a high priority, somewhat intimidated by things I'd heard. There's a vague memory of one of my more readerly friends warning me not to read it, deeming it impossible. I haven't gotten around to watching the film, either. But lately, I've been going to the library and browsing the shelves (instead of going with a particular book in mind and getting disappointed if it's checked out), and I decided to finally pick this up. Having a deadline for reading it also helped get me in gear.
It's obvious that the author was first a poet. The book is more like a long prose poem than a conventional novel. Some of the turns of phrase, the descriptions are beautiful and lyrical. Some of it is vague and cryptic. Overall, the effect is quite nice. I can also see why they wanted to turn it into a film, as there's a cinematic quality to settings and story.
I have a quibble I may as well list here. It isn't that I object to the word in question; I use it, but it's a matter of context. This is the fourth literary- fiction-type writer I have seen who assembles careful constructions of words in the narrative, only to use the word "shit" instead of one more appropriate to the tone, such as "excrement." It just seems like a malfunction of imagination. It would be different if it were in dialogue.
Anyway, back to the other aspects of the novel. The story drew me in more than I expected, and it was a pretty quick read. Kip, the army bomb expert, was the only character I really liked. I enjoyed the way his view of the world was depicted, especially his fascination with art. The sequences about defusing bombs were gripping. His reaction to the bombing of Hiroshima was very intense and made total sense. I didn't dislike Hana the nurse, the English patient, or Caravaggio the thief; but they felt less like real people than Kip did. I felt sort of sorry for Hana, but she was rather ghostly in her apparent PTSD. I would've liked to have seen more about Caravaggio and his adventures. The English patient himself was an object of pity in some ways and a sphinx in others. I liked the story of his affair with Katharine the least of all the plot threads; it didn't come across as true love or passion, more like misery with sex. The only part of it that seemed anything like love was what the man went through to try to help her after her husband's freakout, then later to recover her body. While her slow, painful death was terrible, I could never like Katharine as a person; she was too sullen, mercurial, and demanding--but where a woman might see a shrew, a man might see a passionate and enigmatic challenge, I suppose.
I can handle open-ended conclusions, but this left too much unresolved at the end. I was happy to find out what happened to Kip; but the novel began with Hana and the English patient, and we got only a vague idea of where Hana went and nothing at all definitive about the English patient. Did Hana ever really recover from what she'd seen? Did Caravaggio shoot the English patient or did he just eventually die of his burns? What happened to Caravaggio? Did he and Hana ever see each other again? I wanted to know more.
But overall, a pretty good read. It feels like a bit of an accomplishment to check it off the list.(less)

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Apr 08, 2009 Betsy Boo rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-lit

Thank God that's over! What a difficult, frustrating book! The first half of the book is like having a jigsaw puzzle where none of the pieces fit, so you keep trying to force them together in vain. It is only with the second half of the book that you are somewhat rewarded...the narrative smooths out and you find yourself finally caring what happens to these people. The up-side is, there are sections where the descriptions are beautiful and poetic, but in my mind that doesn't make up for the lack...more

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Trudi Here, here! I totally agree. I too attempted to suffer through this critically acclaimed novel, but unlike you gave up in exasperation long before the...more
Apr 08, 2009 10:19am

Betsy Boo Ahhh!!! You are so much smarter than I am! I am definitely going to give up sooner...3 chapters is all they get from me. I love your "Secret Handshake...more
Apr 08, 2009 04:00pm

Mar 04, 2009 Adam rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-modern

Where do I begin with this book!?! I had read Ondaatje's "Divisidero" and thought it had stunning prose. The narrative was unconventional and intriguing and reminded me of the beat-writers - only less outlandish and indulgant. Naturally, I assumed that this writer's award-winning novel "The English Patient" would illicit the same imagery and magic.
It did not.
This book was painful. I never quite knew what was going on or what I was suppose to be feeling. There were no characters to really iden...more

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Sep 11, 2007 Jake rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: generallit

This book is like reading water. Ondaatje's writing is just so fluid and lyrical that it ends up being utterly captivating. The tale of identity lost and found that he weaves in the English Patient is the kind that will stay with you forever.

Poorly done over by the movie.

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Nov 20, 2012 Chrissie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, hf, italy, libya, egypt

The writing ….what can I say? I love it:

She had always wanted words. She loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water. She returned to her husband. “From this point on,” she whispered, “we will either find or lose our souls. Seas move away. Why not lovers? “

When we parted for the last time, Maddox used the old farewell: “May God make safety your companion”. And then I strode away from him saying, “There is...more The writing ….what can I say? I love it:

She had always wanted words. She loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water. She returned to her husband. “From this point on,” she whispered, “we will either find or lose our souls. Seas move away. Why not lovers? “

When we parted for the last time, Maddox used the old farewell: “May God make safety your companion”. And then I strode away from him saying, “There is no God.”

Both excerpts are found in ”Part Nine: The Cave of Swimmers”.

With some friends, one can disagree about almost everything and still one remains friends. The writing keeps the reader wondering and thinking, and it flows beautifully. It creates an ambiance; it creates a sensual feeling. Rather than depicting sex crudely, the lines create an atmosphere of sensuality that is inviting. That is what I felt when I listened to “Part Eight: The Holy Forest”. I do not understand the meaning of every line, but my mind keeps churning and for me the sentences sing. Physical attraction cannot be pinpointed to words and thoughts, it just exists. You feel comfortable or enticed simply by the other’s presence. You feel the tension or the ease in the author’s lines.

I suppose I should have copied other sections…..There are so many that are lovely. Ondaatje draws scenes that you never want to forget. Chapter ten: They are celebrating Hana’s b-day. They are outside on a terrace of the wrecked Italian villa. It is night. The “English Patient”, the burned one is upstairs in his room. By the way he is not English…. Kip has made a dinner for them, a dinner that is for the others because he only eats “raw onions” and fresh vegetables and he will never drink the wine. He is a sapper, an explosive expert, the one who dismantles the unexploded mines of which there are many in Italy following the war. The date is 11945. He is also a Sikh. It is he that has collected snail shells and put oil in them for a flicker of light. Caravaggio, the maimed Italian thief/spy, a long-time friend from her childhood will give Hana a story. And Hana, she pulls off her sneakers and climbs barefoot onto the table and sings the Marseilles. These are the four main characters of the story. Are you curious about these individuals? How do they connect? What do they feel for each other? How have they changed each other? Do you enjoy beautiful, suggestive, delicious writing? Well then, read the book. Or listen to it, as I have done.

Christopher Cazenove is the narrator of the audiobook. You easily recognize the different characters’ voices. I particularly love the voice of the “English patient”. There are a few songs. I wish he had dared to sing them. I love it when narrators do that.

I removed one star because sometimes it is quite difficult to understand what is going on. You certainly have to pay very close attention. The jumps in time and character speaking can be confusing.
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Jul 17, 2010 Molly Westerman rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who hated (or loved) the film version; lovers of beautiful language

Shelves: favorite-fiction, fiction

The English Patient is a sort of postmodernist ensemble character study, working through the traumatic memories of a nurse, a thief, a combat engineer, and a mysterious burned man who may or may not remember his own name. That sounds really abstract and difficult and boring, but it's actually a beautiful and gripping novel, and one that my undergraduate students always love. It's a book about identity (and its trickiness), all sorts of love, sex, war, trauma, storytelling, reading, nations, impe...more

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Oct 24, 2007 Kate rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: brit-lit

Die already.

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Feb 21, 2011 Oria rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Imagine you are in a small theater, watching a play. The lights are all trained on the stage and you are close enough to see the people whose dramatic lives enfold under your curious eyes. You see a room, four people, a bed on which a man lies down, eyes half closed, telling a story. His body burned black in places, his thin frame fits the bed so well it seems he is molded into it. The other three are listening as if under a spell, because they all want to know who he is. He is the one keeping t...more Imagine you are in a small theater, watching a play. The lights are all trained on the stage and you are close enough to see the people whose dramatic lives enfold under your curious eyes. You see a room, four people, a bed on which a man lies down, eyes half closed, telling a story. His body burned black in places, his thin frame fits the bed so well it seems he is molded into it. The other three are listening as if under a spell, because they all want to know who he is. He is the one keeping them together.

The nurse, Hana, young and marked by the tragedies of war, by death and grief and loneliness; the thief Caravaggio, who came because he knew Hana's father and now she is his only connection with a world he was once a part of; and Kip, the young sapper in the British army, whose life can end with every minute he spends deactivating the mines the enemies left behind. And him, the burned man, the one they all call the English patient, for want of another name.

The setting is a villa in Italy, a place that was once a nunnery, a hospital and then a German defence and now it's both a refuge and a trap, for within its rooms are hidden mines that can go off at a wrong move. Mines left behind not long ago by the enemy, fighting in the World War II.
Here time is not measured in hours but in the books Hana reads to the burned man, in the ampoules of morphine she administers him for the pain, in the stories that he tells.
There is nothing left for him now but to tell them his story. How he lived in the desert, fell in love, and wandered for years carrying a book in which he kept maps, drawing, clippings of various kinds, personal notes.

The action is fragmented and elusive. Just when you think the mystery starts to unravel, the lights on the stage go off and then a single ray of light appears, trained on a different person. The people on the stage are surrounded by the stories of sand. The Englishman's tales carry them into the desert, into another life, and they listen, hoping to find a clue to the man's identity. Has he really forgotten who he is? How come he can remember so much but not his name?

Reading this book was not easy. There are small fragments like miniature gems in their perfection: the eating of a plum, a voice reading poetry in the desert, a caterpillar moving on someone's cheek, a breath of a sleeping person. It is one of those books that need to be read at least twice and with each time, perhaps, find another clue, another piece in the great puzzle that is the English patient.
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Oct 31, 2009 Katsumi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: romance-erotic-affairs

This is a novel of revelation, and just as the identity of the English patient is slowly revealed as the novel progresses, so too are the inner selves and spiritual identities of the other characters in the novels. Ondaatje writes his novel of discovery very much in the manner of Virgina Woolf, revealing things only briefly, like "flashes of lightning." Indeed, lightning abounds in this novel, lighting up the dark and melancholic landscape for a very brief period, but long enough to reveal hints...more

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Jul 25, 2008 Michael Kneeland rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When I first experienced this novel, I was a freshman in college. My grades had been poor because the journalism major I had thought I wanted to pursue turned out to just be a series of courses on how to write with hot air and the unnecessary rules that bind that style of writing--it was clear that Hunter S. Thompson had made no impression on the School of Journalism at the University of Maine. I was clearly too depressed and listless to make any real attempt at passing those journalism courses,...more When I first experienced this novel, I was a freshman in college. My grades had been poor because the journalism major I had thought I wanted to pursue turned out to just be a series of courses on how to write with hot air and the unnecessary rules that bind that style of writing--it was clear that Hunter S. Thompson had made no impression on the School of Journalism at the University of Maine. I was clearly too depressed and listless to make any real attempt at passing those journalism courses, and the few English classes I was taking were "core" classes and so crammed lots of Shakespeare down my throat (despite my current infatuation with the Bard, I was then much too restless to appreciate the finer qualities of his plays).

And then, Professor Norris assigned us The English Patient.

I remember thinking within the first few pages of reading how bizarre the novel seemed to be. After all, the tense shifts frequently back and forth from present to past in an apparently random fashion. The setting jumped all over the place, from an abandoned Italian monastery towards the end of World War II to a cartographers' camp outside of Cairo, and so on. And yet, it was clear to me by the time I finished that, despite the apparent randomness of the technical aspects of the novel, no other novel had ever left such a definite and lucid impression on me. I truly knew the characters, how they thought, how they acted, and how they interacted with one another. The plot, while it seemed difficult to follow at first, was not only understandable by the end but moreover heartrending and tragic. I had no idea that novels could do this, be so disjointed and yet singularly impressive and evocative. Needless to say, my faith in literature was completely renewed after reading The English Patient, and while it is perhaps not the best example of the novel (remember, this was years before I first encountered Ulysses), it nevertheless showed me the infinite possibilities of the narrative form.

Indulge me for a moment to divulge a bit more about the novel itself:

The characters in the novel are among those from literature I will remember and cherish as long as my memory remains intact. There is Hana, the young Canadian nurse who is clearly suffering from PTSD (for many things experienced during the War, including the death of her father, a pilot who was shot down) and is trying to make it right by caring for someone who will remain alive. There is Almasy--the titular patient--who we first encounter as a mystery burn victim, a man pulled from the wreckage of a crashed plane (as Hana's father would have been had he survived...), but who we later learn is a much, much more complex character. There is Caravaggio, the Canadian thief (and apparent friend of Hana's father) and sometime secret agent who is now mysteriously missing both of his thumbs. And there is Kip, the Sikh sapper who has joined the British Army in an attempt to show his loyalty to the British Empire and assimilate himself into it, despite protests from his anti-Imperial brother.

And these are only the characters we meet in the "present" time of the novel, that is, the end of World War II. I have said nothing of Katharine, around whom Almasy's stories and memories constantly revolve, or Geoffrey Clifton, Katharine's husband, who becomes an obvious obstacle for Almasy (though the author, Michael Ondaatje, never allows his narrative to sink to the level of a soap opera). These characters live only in the memory of the novel, and we never see them in the "present."

The reason we never see them in the present is one of the reasons why the novel's plot is so heartrending. I will say nothing of what happens, except to say that if you have seen the equally wonderful--but incredibly different--Academy Award-winning film adaptation, you only know half of the story. There is so much more going on in the novel, things that cannot be fully translated to the screen because they are emoted in such a dreamlike and poetic fashion.

Michael Ondaatje is one of the contemporary authors I admire most. He follows the "rules" of novel-writing, but only until they hamper his ideas, at which point he bends them or ignores them altogether. He seamlessly blends poetry and prose and is therefore able to touch emotions that most other novelists completely ignore. Undoubtedly, it is for these reasons that I found The English Patient so refreshing back in the spring of 2001, and why I have since returned to it time and time again.(less)

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May 05, 2008 Nathaniel rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Just about every major character in this book is self-sacrificing to the point of abstract goodness without traction. Saintliness makes numerous appearances in character sketches and many actions are drenched in its overtones. This robs the book of any real driving tension--unless you are truly concerned with the English Patient's mysterious identity, which the author almost too obviously wants you to realize should not be the point.

It makes sense that the period immediately following WWII would...more Just about every major character in this book is self-sacrificing to the point of abstract goodness without traction. Saintliness makes numerous appearances in character sketches and many actions are drenched in its overtones. This robs the book of any real driving tension--unless you are truly concerned with the English Patient's mysterious identity, which the author almost too obviously wants you to realize should not be the point.

It makes sense that the period immediately following WWII would be saturated in an unabsorbable diminishing of tensions and that people who had come to feel like they were aligned against forces and armies rather than individuals become a bit anchorless and developmentally stuck. If it was Ondaatje's goal to conjure up this environment in his dream-filled, morphine-soaked Italian villa that is conveniently free of any intrusions from the outside world, then he was successful.

But, I don't know . . . I have a problem with the fact that all four of the major characters are essentially fearless. I can get over them not having any real vices and them having excuses for everything questionable that they do; but the stoicism/heroism and determination that they all display is spread around too generously and makes the characters less believable.

That said, the prose was consistently fine throughout and the well-researched passages about defusing explosive devices were both memorable and arresting. Also, even if I would have liked a bit more texture to the characters, Ondaatje understands the way people interact with one another, he understands where, how and why they construct boundaries, what they choose to remember and why they fail to communicate. He builds the novel around the small, unspoken and selfish needs of his characters (attention, distraction, accuracy, belonging) and his sensitivity and insight in this area absolutely sustains the novel.

I enjoyed "In the Skin of a Lion" considerably more. And the movie did not really impact my reading of this book; because I scarcely remembered it.(less)

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Feb 17, 2008 Jen Padgett Bohle rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One of the most haunting and lyrical novels I've ever devoured; the images are indelible. The movie is an unworthy and entirely incomplete and unpoetic creation if you've read the book. Ondaatje sets the novel in post World War II Italy, and explores isolation, loneliness, alienation, and intense, breathtaking love through the relationships, and sometimes flashback, of the four protagonists (Hana, a nurse; Caravaggio, an old family friend of Hana's and an unctious thief; the English patient [tel...more

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Oct 09, 2007 Lindsey rated it 3 of 5 stars

I waffle on how I feel about this book. I always read the book before reading the book, but I didn't on this one. It's a great book and a great movie, but the love story is definitely not central as advertised, by hmmm...the cover perhaps? I enjoy the rest of the story better than love story anyways. The character of the bomb sapper (and the history of bomb sapping) is the best one in the book (and probably the least screwed up). For being the outcast Indian in war-time England, he has more inte...more

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Sep 10, 2007 Kate rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

This book really gets 3.5 stars from me. And Ondaatje in general is a 5-star writer. His prose is poetry, his characters captivating. Four characters--the sad nurse, the burned patient, the maimed thief, and the heroic "sapper" (someone who dismantles bombs!) live together in a ruined Italian villa at the end of World War II. The book marks an intersection of lives at a critical point of self-examination and transformation.

I enjoyed the history lessons, the geography of the desert as depicted b...more

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Lacey Louwagie I read this book in college and I really loved it -- I remember there was a line in it about how you couldn't fall in love with someone without believ...more
Sep 11, 2007 09:37am

Kate Yes, I don't normally soak up books with war themes--too many assigned readings in high school, I suppose. But there was such an even, slow pacing to...more
Sep 11, 2007 11:13am

Lacey Louwagie After reading that book, I had a psychology professor who said people always shoot for someone who they think is "just a little" more attractive than...more
Sep 13, 2007 02:18pm

Aug 28, 2007 Jan rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Granted, The English Patient is a beautifully written, moving and interesting novel, but ultimately I feel disappointed as I was expecting it to affect me a lot more than it did.

The story is about four people who end up staying together at an abandoned florentine villa in the closing stages of the second world war. The novel describes the protagonists' wartime experiences including the patient's tragic love affair.

The language of this novel is poetic and I had problems with it from the start. S...more

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Nov 02, 2008 Will Byrnes rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This may be one of those rare instances in which the film exceeds the book. It is a wonderful book, but is not without its flaws. The author, in his third person persona, keeps quite a distance from his characters, and the reader is held at arm’s length. Kip, for example is clearly a very positive character, yet we (I) do not feel the affection for him that one might expect. Caravaggio is a thief and remains a thief, so there is little love there to hang onto. The women are also beyond our urge...more

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Sep 22, 2012 Naila rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

I never would've thought to read this on my own, but it was required for one of my classes and it was just so surprisingly moody and poetic.

also: there are a ridiculous number of Libya references...who knew.

1 like · like · see review

Mar 28, 2013 Michelle Bacon rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you

I really don't know what to think about this book. I'm really not sure what I just read. I know there is a severely burned man who has no identity except that he's English and Hana is his attending nurse. She reads books to him and listens to his stories about love and his life before and during the War.
The book is somewhat written like poetic prose which may be the reasoning behind all the awards it has won. It really just had my mind going in circles.
I don't feel that my life has been dramatic...more

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topics	posts	views	last activity
Movie better than the book?	3	54	Apr 06, 2013 05:53am
What's your favorite Character?	10	68	Oct 03, 2012 12:41pm
the theme of emigration	2	25	Jun 30, 2012 05:37am
Mr Beckett's Engl...: The movie	40	10	May 22, 2012 11:48am
Mr Beckett's Engl...: Is the Patient a kind of burned up Indiana Jones	10	9	May 18, 2012 09:20am
Mr Beckett's Engl...: So far the begining	23	14	May 18, 2012 08:04am
Mr Beckett's Engl...: Hana	15	10	May 17, 2012 06:35am

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About Michael Ondaatje

He was born to a Burgher family of Dutch-Tamil-Sinhalese-Portuguese origin. He moved to England with his mother in 1954. After relocating to Canada in 1962, Ondaatje became a Canadian citizen. Ondaatje studied for a time at Bishops College School and Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec, but moved to Toronto and received his BA from the University of Toronto and his MA from Queen's Universit...more

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Quotes from The English Patient

“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves.

I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.” — 381 people liked it

“She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.” — 246 people liked it

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