THE ENGLISH PATIENT.....
MICHAEL ONDAATJE
“A novel is a mirror walking down a road”
WINNER OF THE.....
BOOKER PRIZE FOR FICTION.
The English Patient Quotes
“She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape''
“...the heart is an organ of fire
“From this point on, she whispered, we will either find or lose our souls.”
“Her hand touched me at the wrist. "If I gave you my life, you would drop it. Wouldn't you?"
I didn't say anything''
The English Patient, he gives
us his most stunningly original and lyric novel yet. During the final
moments of World War II, in a deserted Italian villa, four people come
together: a young nurse, her will broken, all her energy focused on her
last, dying patient, a man in whom she has seen something "she wanted to
learn, to grow into and hide in"... the patient: an unknown Englishman,
survivor of a plane crash, his mind awash with a life's worth of
secrets and passions ... a thief whose "skills" have made him one of the
war's heroes, and one of its casualties ... an Indian soldier in the
British army, an expert at bomb disposal whose three years at war have
taught him that "the only thing safe is himself." Slowly, they begin to
reveal themselves to each other, the stories of their pasts and of the
present unfolding in scene after haunting scene, taking us into the
Sahara, the English countryside, down the streets of London during the
Blitz, into the makeshift army hospitals of Italy, and through the
battered gardens and rooms of the villa. And with these stories,
Ondaatje weaves a complex tapestry of image and emotion, recollection
and observation: the paths and details of four diverse lives caught and
changed and now inextricably connected by the brutal, improbable
circumstances of war.
*** "“I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing you.”***