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The English Patient book cover
Historical Fiction · Melancholic

Four people shelter in a ruined Italian villa at the end of the Second World War

The English Patient

by Michael Ondaatje

1992320 pagesModerate readSlow pace
★ Booker Prize, 1992

Four wounded people in an Italian villa

In 1945 the nurse Hana stays behind in a bombed villa in Italy to look after a patient burned beyond recognition. Caravaggio, a thief, and Kip, a Sikh bomb-disposal officer, join them. It shared the 1992 Booker Prize with Sacred Hunger and was named the Golden Man Booker in 2018.

More about this book

Who

Hana, the English patient, Caravaggio and Kip.

World

A ruined villa in Tuscany and the North African desert in memory.

What makes it different

It was named the Golden Man Booker, the best of fifty years of winners, in 2018.

Feel

Lyrical and slow.

See it on Amazon

Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition

Further reading

About the author

Michael Ondaatje1 book on Tori Books