The English Patient Book Summary

In a secluded Italian villa during World War II, a dying burn victim known only as the English Patient unveils the tangled pasts of the four individuals caring for him. Each character—an Indian sapper, a Canadian nurse, a Jewish thief, and the enigmatic patient—grapples with love, loss, and identity. Through haunting memories of desert landscapes and wartime betrayals, their intertwined stories reveal the scars of conflict and the transformative power of love. As secrets unfold, questions arise: Who is the English Patient really? Will the past's shadows dictate their fates after the war?

By Michael Ondaatje

Published: 1993

"The English patient is a man of many stories, his past a mosaic of love, war, and identity, revealing how the boundaries of memory and belonging can intertwine in the chaos of life."

Book Review of The English Patient

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.

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The English patient is a man of many stories, his past a mosaic of love, war, and identity, revealing how the boundaries of memory and belonging can intertwine in the chaos of life.

The English Patient

By Michael Ondaatje