The English Patient by Michael OndaatjeRead about another entry on the list.
There’s a line in this book that sums up the themes of many of these books, and my own: “Between them lay a treacherous and complex journey. It was a very wide world”. The characters’ identities are fluid and untrustworthy. The “English” patient’s secret past is as a Hungarian count, who had a doomed love affair with a married woman. The book relies on Ondaatje’s prose, which is concentrated, thickly sweet and laden with significance.
The English Patient also made Sarah Moss's top ten list of hospital novels, Robert Allison's top ten list of novels of desert war, Joel Cunningham's list of sixteen book-to-movie adaptations that won Academy Awards, Pico Iyer's top five list of books on crossing cultures, John Mullan's list of ten of the best deserts in literature and Jane Ciabattari's list of five masterpiece stories that worked as films.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
