The English Patient: Bloomsbury Modern Classics - Softcover

Ondaatje, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408891344 ISBN 13: 9781408891346

Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2017

Synopsis

WINNER OF THE GOLDEN MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018

'Magnificent' Sunday Times

'The best piece of fiction I've read in years' Independent on Sunday

The final curtain is closing on the Second World War and in an abandoned Italian village. Hana, a nurse, tends to her sole remaining patient. Rescued from a burning plane, the anonymous Englishman is damaged beyond recognition and haunted by painful memories.

The only clue Hana has to unlocking 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 detailing a tragic love affair.

About this title

Review

Haunting and harrowing, as beautiful as it is disturbing, The English Patient tells the story of the entanglement of four damaged lives in an Italian monastery as World War II ends. The exhausted nurse, Hana; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burn victim who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning. In lyrical prose informed by a poetic consciousness, Michael Ondaatje weaves these characters together, pulls them tight, then unravels the threads with unsettling acumen.

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 the Publisher

"A rare and spellbinding web of dreams."
--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

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1408891344
• ISBN 13: 9781408891346
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336