The English Patient

Michael Ondaatje lyrically portrays the convergence of four damaged lives in a bomb-riddled Italian villa in the last days of World War II. Hana, a young Canadian nurse, traumatized by the death and violence she has experienced, and grieving for her dead father; the maimed thief-turned-Allied-agent, Caravaggio; Kip, the emotionally detached Indian sapper — each is haunted in different ways by the man they know only as ‘the English patient’, a nameless burn victim who lies in an upstairs room. His extraordinary knowledge and morphine-induced memories — of the North African desert, of explorers and tribes, of history and cartography; and also of forbidden love, suffering and loss — illuminate the story, and leave all the characters forever changed.