The English Patient: Bloomsbury Modern Classics - Softcover

Ondaatje, Michael

3.87

131,902 ratings by Goodreads

9781408891346: The English Patient: Bloomsbury Modern Classics

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408891344 ISBN 13: 9781408891346

Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2017

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A beautiful new limited edition paperback of The English Patient, published as part of the Bloomsbury Modern Classics listA small cargo plane will come down to land, slipping from the level of the horizon. It tips its wings within desert light and then sound stops, it drifts to earth. The final curtain is closing on the Second World War and in an abandoned Italian villa 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.

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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 the second world war 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 sheet 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 secured 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.

Review:

Profound, beautiful and heart-quickening (Toni Morrison)

Masterful ... A rich and compelling work of fiction (Don DeLillo)

One of the most innovative and liberating writers of our time (Guardian)

Magnificent ... A wise and graceful book about history itself (Sunday Times)

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