The English Patient

by Michael Ondaatje
Category: "Fiction - Historical"
Pages:302
Year of Publication:1993
Date Added:01/20/2021
Date Read:02/10/2025
Notes:In Italy, after the Germans have retreated to the north, four people spend a few months together in an abandoned villa. Hana is a Canadian nurse who has been scarred by the horrors she has seen and by the death of her father. She resigns her position and stays with a badly burned man who can't be moved. Caravaggio, who knew Hana and her father in Canada, worked as a spy for the British. He was caught and had his thumbs cut off. He sees himself as a protector of Hana. Kip is a Sikh who is trained as a sapper. He's assigned to remove German bombs near the villa, and he and Hana grow close. The fourth person is the burn victim. Caravaggio figures out that he is Almasy, a German spy. The victim tells his story -- he affair with the wife of a coworker, the attempt by the coworker to kill him by crashing his plane in the desert, which only resulted in injuring his wife, the victims attempt to find help for her, and his own crash which led to his injuries. When Kip hears about the atomic bomb, he decides the Europeans are evil and leaves. Hana goes back to Canada to live with her step-mother.
My Rating: 5

Reviews for The English Patient

Review - English Patient, The

There were some interesting stories here and there, but basically it was just a tale of four misfits, one of whom was an adulterer. If there was a deeper point hidden in all the symbolism and odd editing, the book never engaged me enough to make it worth figuring out.

Reviewed by Roger on 2025-02-10 13:07:30

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