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Original Essays | September 17, 2013

Lyanda Lynn Haupt: IMG Celebrate Fiercely: Creative Life in Wild Cities

1 comment By Lyanda Lynn Haupt

A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Michael Toms for the iconic New Dimensions radio show. Toms, often called the... Continue »
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4 Burnside Featured Titles- Man Booker Prize Winners
7 Burnside Literature- A to Z

The English Patient

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The English Patient Cover

 

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

With unsettling beauty and intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an abandoned Italian villa at the end of World War II.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.

Review:

"An exotic, consuming, and richly inspired novel of passion. In its elegance and its satisfactions it resembles no book I know." Richard Ford

Review:

"No novel published this year in Britain, or anywhere else, matches The English Patient for either lyricism, narrative impact or quality on any level... This is one of the few truly great post-war novels" Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

Review:

"The best piece of fiction in English I've read in several years." Edmund White
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About the Author

Michael Ondaatje is the author of three previous novels, a memoir and eleven books of poetry. His novel The English Patient won the Booker Prize. Born in Sri Lanka, he moved to Canada in 1962 and now lives in Toronto.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:
kmitchel, January 1, 2011 (view all comments by kmitchel)
This book sat on my shelf for years. I'm not sure what I expected, having ambivalent feelings about the movie. What I found was a story that bravely explored the grey lines of morals and loyalty. Michael Ondaatje is not afraid to create characters searching for redemption in flawed and impossible ways. In another author's hands, the book would be merely depressing. In Ondaatje's, the result is a story of haunting beauty.
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bookluver, December 29, 2007 (view all comments by bookluver)
Never having lived in a warzone, "The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje gave me a greater understanding of the horrors of war. Three men and one woman remain living in a villa in the Tuscan hills.

The villa has been destroyed by bombs during WWII. The lives of these four people, Hana, Kip, Caravaggio and the English patient are also damaged deeply.

The poetic way in which Michael Ondaatje writes is spectacular. Somehow the poetic prose took me under the skin of the characters. I began to see and feel what the people felt as if I were there walking with Kip to find undiscovered mines, with Caravaggio as he shared conversations and morphine with the English patient, listening to Hana read "Kim" by Kipling to the burnt and unrecognizable English patient and falling down a well of memories with the English patient. Herodotus always in his line of vision.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780679745204
Author:
Ondaatje, Michael
Publisher:
Vintage Books USA
Location:
New York :
Subject:
General
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Historical
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
Italy
Subject:
World war, 1939-1945
Subject:
War
Subject:
Historical - General
Subject:
Historical fiction
Subject:
War stories
Subject:
Italy Fiction.
Subject:
World War, 19
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Copyright:
1993
Edition Description:
Trade paper
Series:
Vintage International
Series Volume:
. 5252
Publication Date:
19931131
Binding:
TRADE PAPER
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
320
Dimensions:
8.02x5.20x.66 in. .52 lbs.
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Related Subjects


Featured Titles » Literature
Featured Titles » Man Booker Prize Winners
Fiction and Poetry » Literature » A to Z

The English Patient Used Trade Paper
0 stars - 0 reviews
$4.50 In Stock
Product details 320 pages Vintage Books USA - English 9780679745204 Reviews:
"Review" by , "An exotic, consuming, and richly inspired novel of passion. In its elegance and its satisfactions it resembles no book I know."
"Review" by , "No novel published this year in Britain, or anywhere else, matches The English Patient for either lyricism, narrative impact or quality on any level... This is one of the few truly great post-war novels"
"Review" by , "The best piece of fiction in English I've read in several years." Edmund White
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