English Patient

The exhausted nurse, Hana; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary bomb-defuser, 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. His tale slowly unfolds in streams of consciousness, revealing a tale of torrid affairs, espionage, love and violence against a backdrop of war.

The patient, the not-so English László de Almásy- a Hungarian desert explorer, reveals how he fell in love with the married Katharine Clifton one night as she read from Herodotus' histories aloud around a campfire. They soon begin a very intense affair, but in 1938, Katharine cuts it off, claiming that her husband will go violently mad if he discovers their secret. When World War II breaks out in 1939, the husband offers to evacuate Almásy in his plane. However, he arrives with Katharine and tries to kill all three of them by jealously crashing the plane, leaving Almásy in the desert to die.

This sumptuous Booker-winning story of the entanglement of four damaged lives in an Italian monastery as World War II ends is haunting. In lyrical prose informed by a poetic consciousness, Michael Ondaatje weaves these characters together, pulls them tight, then unravels the threads with unsettling acumen.