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    The English Patient
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    The English Patient
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    The English Patient
    Audiobook8 hours

    The English Patient

    Written by Michael Ondaatje

    Narrated by Christopher Cazenove

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal,and rescue illuminates this book like flashes of heat lightening.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMay 29, 2007
    ISBN9781415939574
    Unavailable
    The English Patient
    Author

    Michael Ondaatje

    Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka and lives in Toronto.  The English Patient won the Booker Prize in 1992 and was made into an Oscar-winning film directed by Anthony Minghella.

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    Reviews for The English Patient

    4/5

    2,611 ratings85 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      This book is the perfect example of the book being better than the film. Loathed the film but I loved the book. Wonderfully written, and with great characters. Really good read, thoroughly recommended.
    • 2/5
      This book didn't really do it for me. While it attempted to be literary and poignant, I felt that it got lost along the way. There were some nice phrases and poetic passages, but apart from this I ultimately felt let down as a reader. I wouldn't really recommend the book, it did not hold significant value in my eyes.

      2 stars.
    • 2/5
      I bought this at a university library in Rome. My holiday had been wonderful but alas I had exhausted my reading cache. I had been deeply in love with the film, had seen twice at the theatres back in States. I even attempted a third viewing in the Eternal City but alas it was dubbed into Italian. Shame. I found the novel somewhat shallow. I wound up borrowing Turgenev's Fathers and Sons for the flight home. I remain sure that the novel isn't as bad as I'm reflecting such.
    • 5/5
      An amazing book. I'd definately recommend this too people, especially since I finished it in under three days. Parts of it were a little confusing just because of the fact that it jumped back and forth through people's perspectives, but other than that the story was amazing. Sad, happy, and inlightening all in on. Michael Ondaatje puts you into the time period, right after the second World War. The English patient's unknown identity only adds to the drama of a mystery. I loved it. I'm so happy I finished the book, because now I can watch the movie! :)
    • 5/5
      I loved the movie, and have long wanted to read the book, so when Michael Ondaatje won the best book that has ever been awarded the Man Booker Prize in the fifty years since it's been in place, I decided I had better read it. I read a lot of reviews about it over the years and the ratings surprisingly were all over the place from 1 to 5 stars. I went into the book with an open mind, and knowing that the movie was incredible, I was excited to read the book. It blew me away. There is much here for a reader to savour - from a love story, to a mystery, to tragic losses, but the language is so incredibly descriptive, and the characters so well drawn right from beginning to end, that the transition from different points of view to different places and varying chronological times throughout, the book and its storyline were seamless, held together by absolutely beautiful language. The book is set in a bombed out nunnery which had been used for a hospital during the war, and it is located in Italy. The ruined building is abandoned except for a Canadian nurse and the patient she refuses to leave. The patient is so badly burned that he is not recognizable, and he needs a lot of care as well as morphine regularly to relieve the pain. Hana thinks the man is English because of his accent. Two other people join them at the nunnery - an East Indian sapper and a man from Hana's past who was renowned as a successful thief before the war. All four had served in various positions during WWII which has just has come to an end in Europe. All four are suffering from some form of PTSD, and all four are trying to find a place of peace after the horrendous things that they have either done or witnessed during that war. Ondaatje shows the true horror of war even as he maintains his beautiful and lyrical language throughout. Even though the English patient never leaves his sickroom, he drives the plot in this book. His secrets and thoughts come out bit by bit throughout the book, mostly in conversations between him and one or more of the three others in the house. His story is tragic, gut-wrenching and surprising, but in some way, helps to heal the three other residents. This book is a definite literary masterpiece. A tour de force.
    • 2/5
      The language is spare and glorious, and I can see how many people fell in love with this book, but I cannot say I enjoyed it. How characters were brought together on whim and scattered like leaves, as if humans can only be impressions on one another. Is that really life? It makes me want to end it.
    • 4/5
      Nice book. Awful film.
    • 3/5
      If you are looking for a book with a great plot and action of any kind look elsewhere. With that said, I didn't love this book, but I also didn't hate it. Ondaatje is clearly talented and his writing reflects that talent. However, this seemed to be more than "a. . . web of dreams." It seems to me to reveal a weakness in the author. After reading, I feel like he just sat down and wrote whatever came to his mind and in the beginning that was great. He established a beautiful yet tragic setting that ultimately reflected the characters interacting within. He also built characters that seemed very complex and for awhile everything seemed to be running smoothly. Then somewhere in the middle of the book everything became stagnant for quite a while, until the end where I felt like everything went crazy and the ending was ultimately rushed.
    • 5/5
      A most loved book!
    • 3/5
      I have never seen the movie that was made from this book, and I am not sure if I'm going to. I really really struggled with the first 100 pages or so of this novel. They are soooo overly descriptive. And entire page associated with 1 person drawing a hopscotch game on the ground and hopping through once. Just so much description for nothing happening.Once the character of Kip comes into the story, it gets more interesting. Now there are actual relationships, and some chapters go back in time to explain how the characters got to this point in their lives.Still a struggle (it took me 10 days to get through 300 pages!). But it's done. I do want to find the Seinfeld episode where Elaine complains about the movie--I think I will get it now.
    • 2/5
      I found this too slow-moving for my tastes -- it bored me so much that by the time anything interesting started to happen, I no longer cared.This book had been on my shelf so long that I thought I had already read it, so I started it the other day thinking it would be a reread. By the time I reached Chap. 2 I realized that I never read this, just watched the movie.
    • 2/5
      I feel Sareene on this, but gave 2 stars less. I've read a lot of books but I've never done almost two months on a book, just because I didn't want to read it because I found it so boring. Never seen the movie and just like Dreesie, I'm doubting if I want to see it. So why did I even finish the book? I just always do...
    • 5/5
      I really don't know how to categorise this novel. I found the language beautiful and the approach to the world and the characters very romantic/sensual. The four characters being impacted by the language of the story and the use of nationality. I will be thinking on this one for a while and thoroughly enjoyed the reading.As an aside, I have never seen the movie though caught previews at the time and from that had assumed a very different novel (basically a by the numbers romance).
    • 3/5
      I was not as impressed as I had hoped to be.
    • 2/5
      The bunch of characters that make up the cast of The English Patient are very lucid. But I have read reviews that present them as shell shocked. Are these people mad? Do they think of themselves as normal? Sure they do. I knew going in that I would not understand all sentences. But there's on part that mystified me. It began with the phrase "Her foot pressed down harder onto the boy's neck..." The book mentions several books of its own. Also, quite a few songs. I don't know why a particular song was chosen. Such as La Marseillaise. Very interesting. Was Madox influenced by the Russian classic Anna Karenina? His fate is tragic, of course. More so because he seemed healthy and righteous. But his part is small. I'm surprised by the large role of Kip. In the movie (which I don't remember much) he was a footnote. In the book, he almost has equal billing with the English Patient. His part had to be big, because of his role as a bomb disarming agent. A sapper. The vocabulary of this book can't be faulted. Words like schottische and pollard. Very apt and relevant and exact. There are two types of books, those that provide illumination and those that need a light to be understood. Did Hana love Almasy because of the contradiction of his character? Because he is elusive, not possessive at all, but at the same time he has to admit that he lost the love of his life. He has a closed face - I'm speaking metaphorically, as his face has melted - but had the air of a man who as been in love. If, as readers, we can know why Hana stayed in Florence to look after the English Patient, we'd have understood the book according to our own interpretation. I just wished I could have seen him die. It would have brought some kind of closure.
    • 3/5
      This book isn't quite what I expected of it--it has many stories in it. And, at the end, I'm not quite sure what to think of it. Parts of this book seemed intentionally confusing, I was unsure who's story was being told at times, and the time frame of the story. The most interesting story to me is that of Hanna...the troubled young Canadian nurse who finds herself in Italy caring for a burnt up man in an abandoned Allied hospital.

      Like most war books, it sends a message of the horrors of war--which I dig. :)

      Since Hanna's story was what was used to draw the reader in at the beginning--I really enjoyed the beginning of the book more than the end. But overall, it is a good book. Interested in seeing the movie now.
    • 5/5
      I love this book. It is the exact kind of mystery that intrigues me. I've read it twice and the second time was even better than the first. One of my all time favorites. The movie is great also.
    • 2/5
      Beautiful, exceptionally so in places, interesting in places (boring and predictable toward the end with Kip), but also curiously empty, like lifting the lid of a good-smelling cake pan and finding just a glob of partially dried icing inside. 2.75 stars.
    • 2/5
      My book club chose this book at the time the movie was coming out and there was a lot of hype about the film. We were very disappointed. It was a drudge to get through, and if it hadn't been a book club selection I would not have finished it. I found it a very hard book to read ... full of allegory and ancient literary references. I don't mind a challenge but I felt the author was just going nowhere. I struggled and by the time book club met I was barely at the midpoint, but after the discussion I did persevere and enjoyed the second half of the book more. Still, I don't recommend it.
    • 2/5
      I liked it in some ways and not others. I found the flow too jumpy to keep my interest. That was deliberate, of course, to create the dreamlike, otherwordly effect but it was distracting to me as I tried to engage with the characters.
    • 4/5
      The stories of 4 people together in Italy at the end of the Second World War. Each has their own history that talks to the relationships within the group. This is a very well written novel that brings the characters to life and pulls the reader into their world and their times. I really enjoyed it.
    • 4/5
      Set in Italy at the end of WWII, this is a story of four marred individuals in an abandoned villa. Hana the nurse who is tired of seeing dying and the loss of her baby and father, Caravaggio the thief who doesn't know what he is now that he has maimed hands, Kip the Indian sapper who dismantles bombs for the allies and the so called English patient who lies in his bed as others come in and interact with him and deal with their own needs.
    • 5/5
      Beautiful , tragic, what else ... Great book but if you enjoy hist FIC or romance, this has everything in spades.
    • 5/5
      How can I word a review that's anywhere near as exquisite as this book? I can't, so I won't try - I'll stumble along in my own clumsy style and try to hint at how magical an experience reading it was.

      I started with a little wariness at the, shall we say, gentle pace. Can I really put up with this all the way through? I wondered. Not more than 2 or 3 pages in, I felt the first tug of its deep-flowing current. The very visual text moves at the pace of a human resting heartbeat. The "English patient" himself explains, about a third of the way in, how to approach the text, when instructing Hana on how to read Kim aloud: "Read him slowly, dear girl, you must read Kipling slowly. Watch carefully where the commas fall so you can discover the natural pauses. [...] Your eye is too quick and North American. Think about the speed of his pen." Once I had this concept in my mind, I was really able to revel in the beauty of the fine-crafted text.

      The characters' lives intertwine, create eddies and backwaters and draw the reader slowly deeper (I'm trying to continue with the water metaphor... and failing miserably.) The timeline and locations shift like the sands of the desert (mixed metaphors, anyone?) as the story gently, quietly, peacefully and somewhat sadly unfolds.

      I'm strongly tempted to return to the beginning and start all over again, to luxuriate in the very human beauty of this story. It is simply a lovely, lovely book.
    • 4/5
      A couple things caught me off guard:

      * Some lengthy passages were free verse poetry, not prose.
      * The book's focus is on the nurse and the bomb defusing expert, unlike the film's focus on the English patient.
    • 5/5
      One of the most thought provoking books I've read. Lyrical and intense.
    • 2/5
      Some nice imagery, but largely unbearable.
    • 2/5
      I am not sure why, but this story just didn't click with me. I tried hard and there were some parts that I did like (Carravagio's story, Kip's musings about the work of a sapper), but the novel as a whole did not work for me. Beautiful language though.
    • 4/5
      Lyrical language, layers of story and complicated characters helped considerably by watching the movie first. If I had picked this up without watching the movie, I'm not sure I would have continued past the first few chapters. This is the type of literary novel that a reader has to persevere and stitch the pieces of story together as the author seems to throw them randomly at you. In fact, the author carefully crafts the story, but the reader needs to do more work than straight forward fiction...one of the reasons I don't read much literary stuff. Call me lazy, but I work at work and read for entertainment. Those literary books that I do read, I usually enjoy for the language and craft rather than the story, but this one satisfied both needs...once I got past the first couple of layers.
    • 5/5
      I have actually never seen the movie and came to read this book years after it came out. It does not diappoint. Lyrical, slightly hallucinatory story of a series of refugees brought together in a crumbling Italian villa during the second world war. Told with flashbacks that explain the identity of the English patient.