The English Patient (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Michael Ondaatje
- First Published: 1992
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1945
- Setting: Italy
- Principal Characters: Hana, the English patient/Count Ladislaus de Almásy, David Caravaggio, Kirpal Singh, Geoffrey Clifton, Katharine Clifton
- Genres: Long fiction, War fiction
- Subjects: Europe or Europeans, World War II, Violence, Nationalism, Identity
- Locales: Florence, Italy
Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lanka-born novelist who lives in Canada. He is a writer, consequently, whose work writhes with the tensions inherent among races, cultures, and nationalities. Personal and political histories are Ondaatje’s concerns, particularly as they intertwine and work to shape the emerging individual consciousness. In The English Patient, which shared the 1992 Booker Prize with Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger, Ondaatje multiplies these histories and makes of his novel a four-stranded narrative that moves between love story, history, and mystery. Any story...
[The entire page is 2339 words long]
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