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The English Patient: Man Booker Prize Winner (Vintage International) Kindle Edition
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.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage
- Publication dateApril 6, 2011
- File size3164 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
A book that binds readers of great literature, The English Patient garnered the Booker Prize for author Ondaatje. The poet and novelist has also written In the Skin of a Lion, Coming Through Slaughter and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid; two collections of poems, The Cinnamon Peeler and There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do; and a memoir, Running in the Family.
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
- Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Sensuous, mysterious, rhapsodic, it transports the reader to another world .... Ondaatje's most probing examination yet of the nature of identity." —San Francisco Chronicle
"Mr. 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 pleasure of being there." —The Wall Street Journal
From the Publisher
--Time magazine
"A magically told novel...ravishing...many-layered."
--Los Angeles Times
"Profound, beautiful and heart-quickening."
--Toni Morrison
"Lyrical.... An exquisite ballet that takes place in the dark."
--Boston Sunday Globe
"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
"A poetry of smoke and mirrors."
--Washington Post Book World
"It is an adventure, mystery, romance, and philosophical novel in one.... Michael Ondaatje is a novelist with the heart of a poet."
--Chicago Tribune
From the Inside Flap
Read by Michael York
The Booker Prize-winning novel, now a critically acclaimed major motion picture, starring Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe and Kristin Scott Thomas. 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.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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.
From the Hardcover edition.
From AudioFile
Product details
- ASIN : B004JHYRYU
- Publisher : Vintage (April 6, 2011)
- Publication date : April 6, 2011
- Language : English
- File size : 3164 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 337 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #85,382 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #383 in Romance Literary Fiction
- #540 in Historical British & Irish Literature
- #646 in Contemporary Literary Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Michael Ondaatje is the author of several novels, as well as a memoir, a nonfiction book on film, and several books of poetry. Among his many Canadian and international recognitions, his novel The English Patient won the 1992 Man Booker Prize, was adapted into a multi-award winning Oscar movie, and was awarded the Golden Man Booker Prize in 2018; Anil’s Ghost won the Giller Prize, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and the Prix Médicis; and Warlight was longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. Born in Sri Lanka, Michael Ondaatje lives in Toronto.
Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers praise the writing style as beautiful and rich. They find the story engaging, weaving threads of love throughout. The book is described as thought-provoking, educational, and intellectual. Readers appreciate the vivid imagery and character development. The emotional content is heartfelt and soft, dealing with life's most tragic affairs, such as war, heartache, and loss. Customers describe the sensual content as wonderful, romantic, and dreamlike.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers praise the book's writing style. They find the descriptions rich and moving. The author is described as one of the greatest storytellers of his time. Readers appreciate the alchemy of language and find the book an engaging read.
"...The language is lyrical. At the end of WWII, a young woman, a nurse, winds up living with three men in a bombed out wreck of an Italian Villa...." Read more
"...I found that Caravaggio was most interesting and complex when he reminisced about his history as a friend of Hana's father and his memories of her..." Read more
"...of 2011 boldly welcomed me back into the depth and the beauty of the author’s words...." Read more
"Hauntingly beautiful. Ondaatje's writing is original. It’s lovely and haunting, poetic and intellectual, sensual and political...." Read more
Customers enjoy the compelling story with its weaving of love stories throughout. They find it a human story about love and grief, with beautiful prose and an unusual setting. The emotional drive of events is felt, with passion, yearning, and pain. Readers appreciate the heartfelt prose and interesting characters. The plot and history of Africa are also mentioned as intriguing.
"...I remember the movie being beautifully filmed and I loved the score, but I left the theatre feeling confused...." Read more
"...Another very powerful relationship within the novel was the relationship between Hana and her father...." Read more
"...’s Series DVD Bonus Material; the sound of his prose simply mesmerized me...." Read more
"...Readers were never fully in balance’. The story was shattered or fractured. Pieces of the plot were lying everywhere throughout the book...." Read more
Customers find the writing thought-provoking and educational. They appreciate the depth and richness of the characters. The book explores a variety of themes, such as boundaries, identity issues, love, war, and war. Readers find the book intellectual, poetic, and sensual.
"...The depth and richness that he infused in each of these characters pulled them together while he shaped them to stand alone on their own merits...." Read more
"...The thought processes are deep and symbolism ties events and feelings to what seems to be destiny, characters express themselves as if the mind has..." Read more
"I was very confused by this book...." Read more
"...Ondaatje's writing is original. It’s lovely and haunting, poetic and intellectual, sensual and political...." Read more
Customers enjoy the vivid imagery and character descriptions in the book. They find the film beautifully filmed and the score delightful.
"...I remember the movie being beautifully filmed and I loved the score, but I left the theatre feeling confused...." Read more
"...The book is filled with beautiful and vivid descriptions but it seems that more attention was given to pretty writing than to a substantial plot...." Read more
"...created the source for Almásy’s ferocious passion, Ondaatje’s beautiful style let me feel every moment and emotion of their love, making it both a..." Read more
"Hauntingly beautiful. Ondaatje's writing is original. It’s lovely and haunting, poetic and intellectual, sensual and political...." Read more
Customers like the character development. They say the characters seem realistic in a war zone.
"...Hana was one of the most interesting characters in the novel, in my opinion, as was Kip...." Read more
"...Don't skip the book...it is a good read with characters of depth that you don't often encounter." Read more
"...I've completed the book, I must say the prose is beautiful, I felt the characters, the scenes, the emotions, the air, the war and everything else..." Read more
"...Four major characters, including the charred "English patient" filled the bulk of the story...." Read more
Customers find the book's emotional content heartfelt and soft, yet dealing with life's most tragic affairs like war, heartache, and loss. They describe it as a haunting tale of war and nature, a human story about love and grief of wounded people. The book explores relationships and living in the residue of war, highlighting the damage war inflicts on humanity.
"...the effects of human reactions on challenging times and damage of war on humanity. Great book for all!" Read more
"...say the prose is beautiful, I felt the characters, the scenes, the emotions, the air, the war and everything else the author attempts to convey...." Read more
"...But more than that, it's a story of personal life versus war. Characterization is deeply intelligent. It did have flaws...." Read more
"Fascinating and horrifying story of relationships and living in the residue of war...." Read more
Customers enjoy the sensual content of the book. They describe the story as sensual, wild, and romantic at the end of World War II. Readers feel the hearts and souls of the characters through the vividly brought-to-life intercourse of tongues.
"...I could fully feel the hearts and souls of each of these characters at every moment as they lived, felt, loved and evolved around each other...." Read more
"...It’s lovely and haunting, poetic and intellectual, sensual and political...." Read more
"...is an electric and electrifying intercourse of tongues, an exchange of lying words for a shared language...." Read more
"...has flash backs in the main character's memory, which is vividly brought to real life." Read more
Customers find the pacing slow and the plot dragging. They also mention that the timeline is confusing and the sensuality is overwritten.
"...It did have flaws. The time line was confusing. The sensuality was over-written...." Read more
"...But I do. From such a highly regarded author, I found it wordy and slow paced, which was a surprise." Read more
"Hauntingly beautiful. Ondaatje's writing is original. It’s lovely and haunting, poetic and intellectual, sensual and political...." Read more
"Beautifully written but a bit slow moving for my liking" Read more
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Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2022“A novel is a mirror walking down a road”.
I came to know of the award winning ‘the English Patient’ through a quiz program and there the announcer was talking of Michael Ondaatje the golden Booker Prize winning author from Sri Lanka. It is true that Mr. Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka, but we must admit that he is now a Canadian. He is yet another treasure we failed to keep in the island nation. That day I decided to add The English Patient to my collection and purchased the kindle version.
I was not short of enthusiasm but reading it at the beginning was like eating string hoppers without curry. String hoppers are a delicacy made of rice or wheat flour and has these fine strands woven together into a circle. You eat them with a Sambol and ideally with a curry. Without a curry it is a bit bland, and you will have trouble swallowing. I do.
The book starts abruptly. Characters just immerge out of nowhere without any warning or even an introduction. ‘But novels commenced with hesitation or chaos. Readers were never fully in balance’.
The story was shattered or fractured. Pieces of the plot were lying everywhere throughout the book. Getting through the story required some jigsaw puzzle building skills and a lot of focused brain power.
You had to travel between the Italian villa and the dessert quite often as the scene shifts between them.
The sentences were not anything like what we learnt during our English lessons. Some lacked a noun. Some sentences were just one word. the fine balance between prose and poetic nature in the book in entertaining. The oddly shortened and out of place wording reminded me of the worry, intimidation, and suspicious nature of the souls in an era of war.
The author had given life to inanimate objects with no restrictions. “As he passed the lamps in the long hall, they flung his shadow forward ahead of him”.
I really admired the subtle hints or life lessons the author had brought to life through his characters.
“She entered the story knowing she would emerge from it feeling she had been immersed in the lives of others, in plots that stretched back twenty years, her body full of sentences and moments, as if awaking from sleep with a heaviness caused by unremembered dreams”.
This same statement written in the book is proved to be very true for the same. I finished reading the book immersed in the lives of Hanna, Caravaggio, Kip and the English patient.
I, as a book addict have no trouble acknowledging the reading lesson depicted in the book - “Read him slowly, dear 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 window, and listened to birds, as most writers who are alone do. Some do not know the names of birds, though he did. Your eye is too quick and North American. Think about the speed of his pen. What an appalling, barnacled old first paragraph it is otherwise.”
Some reviewers had openly accused the book of being erotic. Though it is true there is a lot of references towards intimacy and sexuality, it is beyond doubt logical and applicable to a post conflict mentality. Young men and women who were solely concerned about survival amidst death and destruction will revert back to seeking pleasures of the flesh and physical urges when things calmed.
Its difficult to write further about the reading experience without hinting towards the actual content itself. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and it was indeed worthy of the Golden Booker.
- Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2016But worthwhile, I think. I saw the movie years ago and I read the book now because I am about to watch the movie again. I remember the movie being beautifully filmed and I loved the score, but I left the theatre feeling confused. As I implied in the title, this is not an easy book to read: to puzzle out. At the end, nothing is as it appeared at the beginning. How anybody makes the book into a movie is beyond me.
But if the book is difficult to read and understand, it is beautifully written. The language is lyrical. At the end of WWII, a young woman, a nurse, winds up living with three men in a bombed out wreck of an Italian Villa. One is The English Patient, hideously burned in a plane crash in Libya, and supposed to be dying. The other three are also victims of the war, although their wounds might be more difficult to see. The interactions of these four damaged survivors are woven into a tapestry as the novel unfolds, beautiful but, at the end, still difficult to comprehend.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2010I found The English Patient to be a fantastic book, but one which is a bit emotionally taxing, particularly the utterly heart-rending ending, which I won't give away, but which tears the community of World War II survivors apart.
I know that for most people The English Patient conjurs up ideas about a great tragic love story between the main character--the English patient--and his forbidden love. For me, however, the love story fell a little bit flat. Maybe it was because I had heard so much about the romantic side of the narrative and perhaps had expected too much from it in terms of romance. And while the love story certainly is central to the plot surrounding the English patient, it's hardly the kind of romance for which anyone would hope themselves. This is not the kind of love story which will make young women fantacize about being Katherine and falling for the mysterious desert-obsessed English patient. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I didn't shed any tears over the end of their doomed romance, as I had found it rather uninspiring myself.
*note that I have not yet seen the film of The English Patient. My understanding is that the impact of the final scenes is significantly different, bringing more focus and attention to the love story, and for this reason the love story may be more powerful in the film, but I'm not in a position to judge.*
What truly touched me about the narrative of The English Patient was everything but the English patient. Hana was one of the most interesting characters in the novel, in my opinion, as was Kip. Now that I consider this, it's really not all that surprising given my interst in postcolonialism--particularly Indian literature--since Kip and his relationship with the other characters in the novel, all of whom are western define the final conflict of the narrative as a conflict between the west--symbolized in England--and the east--symbolized in both Japan and India. I'm afraid to go on about the powerful nature of this relationship and the consequences for the end of the novel because I don't want to give away too much about the end of the book. My hope, after all, is to inspire others to read great literature, not to make reading great literature unnecessary as I summarize it all. :)
Another very powerful relationship within the novel was the relationship between Hana and her father. I found Caravaggio a rather uninspiring character, but his role within the context of Hana's relationship with her father was crucial. I found that Caravaggio was most interesting and complex when he reminisced about his history as a friend of Hana's father and his memories of her as a child. Hana's final coming to terms with her relationship with her father, with her place in the war, and with the circumstances of her father's life was also extremely powerful, but again I don't want to give too much away.
Suffice it to say that The English Patient is one of those books which everyone ought to read, though be warned that while it is a deceptively slim novel it is also powerfully heavy and an incredibly serious novel. This is one which you won't forget any time soon, and which you will likely mentally chew over for a long time to come.
Read all of my book reviews on my blog at [...]
Top reviews from other countries
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aurorasfReviewed in Italy on July 12, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars La trama è molto interessante.
È molto bello anche se la fraseologia è un po’ complicata
- Grace FergusonReviewed in France on May 27, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful
A beautiful book !
- Pedro NascenteReviewed in Brazil on April 13, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
The author excels in telling a good story.
-
H.TgReviewed in Germany on March 15, 2022
5.0 out of 5 stars Unversehrt und schnell
angekommen! Schreibstil ist sehr flüssig und schön.
- dieranovaReviewed in Canada on November 16, 2018
5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent
Prose you can lose yourself in. Ondatjie is a master storyteller.