The English Patient: Man Booker Prize Winner
Apr 2011 · Sold by Vintage
4.5star
31 reviews
Ebook
320
Pages
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About this ebook
BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of Warlight traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an abandoned Italian villa at the end of World War II. “A rare spellbinding web of dreams.” —Time
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.
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.
Ratings and reviews
4.5
31 reviews
A Google user
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August 6, 2011
If you like romantic language and poetic prose, you will enjoy this book. I honestly didn't understand what was going on for half of the novel because of its non-linear structure and breezy descriptions, that sometimes went on for pages and pages. The parts that I did understand, I enjoyed. There were rare moments of clarity when the beauty of the words actually found its way into my cynical, just-tell-me-in-plain-language brain and I felt emotion for the characters and their circumstances. Overall, it's a book that you must commit yourself to, or else when you put it down, you lose the will to pick it back up again.
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April 10, 2010
Master story telling. Beautiful ensemble of characters. One of the rarities where a movie does justice to the book. The geography and spirit of the book lingers in you for years. I can see why Binoche named her daughter Hanna. Hard to shake off something so overpowering. Having said that every book does not meet every expectation of the reader. I read this with minimum expectation about the author as it was the first time I read Ondaatje. After reading this book I have immense respect to the author and his style of writing.
About the author
MICHAEL ONDAATJE is the author of six previous novels, a memoir, a nonfiction book on film, and several books of poetry. The English Patient won the Booker Prize and subsequently the Golden Man Booker Prize, given in honor of the Prize's 50th anniversary; Anil's Ghost won the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Giller Prize, and the Prix Médicis. Born in Sri Lanka, Michael Ondaatje now lives in Toronto.
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