The English Patient: Man Booker Prize WinnerBOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of Warlight traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an abandoned Italian villa at the end of World War II. “A rare spellbinding web of dreams.” —Time The nurse Hana, exhausted by death, obsessively tends to her last surviving patient. Caravaggio, the thief, tries to reimagine who he is, now that his hands are hopelessly maimed. The Indian sapper Kip searches for hidden bombs in a landscape where nothing is safe but himself. And at the center of his labyrinth lies the English patient, nameless and hideously burned, a man who is both a riddle and a provocation to his companions—and whose memories of suffering, rescue, and betrayal illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning. |
From inside the book
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Page 6
... entered him along with the date or by the sound of their feet running . She would sit and read , the book under the waver of light . She would glance now and then down the hall of the villa that had been a war hospital , where she had ...
... entered him along with the date or by the sound of their feet running . She would sit and read , the book under the waver of light . She would glance now and then down the hall of the villa that had been a war hospital , where she had ...
Page 7
... the bombing had fallen away from a mural at night . The villa that she and the Englishman inhabited now was much like that . Some rooms could not be entered because of rubble . One bomb crater allowed moon and rain into 7.
... the bombing had fallen away from a mural at night . The villa that she and the Englishman inhabited now was much like that . Some rooms could not be entered because of rubble . One bomb crater allowed moon and rain into 7.
Page 12
... entered the room and then the corporeal body had disappeared . She closed the door and replaced the seal of warning . She sat in the window alcove in the English patient's room , the painted walls on one side of her , the valley on the ...
... entered the room and then the corporeal body had disappeared . She closed the door and replaced the seal of warning . She sat in the window alcove in the English patient's room , the painted walls on one side of her , the valley on the ...
Page 13
... , having no qualms about the dangers of the pos- sibly mined library or the thunder that startled her in the night . She was restless after the cold months , when she had been limited to dark , protected spaces . She entered 13.
... , having no qualms about the dangers of the pos- sibly mined library or the thunder that startled her in the night . She was restless after the cold months , when she had been limited to dark , protected spaces . She entered 13.
Page 14
... entered rooms that had been soiled by soldiers , room's whose furniture had been burned within them . She cleared out leaves and shit and urine and charred tables . She was living like a vagrant , while elsewhere the English patient ...
... entered rooms that had been soiled by soldiers , room's whose furniture had been burned within them . She cleared out leaves and shit and urine and charred tables . She was living like a vagrant , while elsewhere the English patient ...
Contents
25 | |
Sometime a Fire | 67 |
South Cairo 19301938 | 131 |
Katharine | 147 |
A Buried Plane | 159 |
In Situ | 179 |
The Holy Forest | 205 |
The Cave of Swimmers | 227 |
August | 263 |
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Common terms and phrases
Almásy arms Bedouin beside body bomb disposal burned Cairo Candaules candle Caravaggio carried cave Clifton climbed colour crystal set dance dark desert English patient Englishman entered everything eyes face fingers fire fuze garden Gilf Kebir glass Gyges hair Hana Hana's hands head hear Herodotus hill knew Kufra later leaned leave light listening looking Lord Suffolk Lorenz Hart lover Madox Marston Magna MICHAEL ONDAATJE Miss Morden Monterchi moondial Morden morphine mouth moved neck never night oasis painted paused plane pocket pulled rain rifle river sand sapper says seemed Senussi shoulder Sikh silence Singh sits skin sleep slipped smell soldiers someone steps stone stood suddenly talk tent thing touch town trees turned Uweinat Villa San Girolamo walked wall watched window wire woman young Zerzura
Popular passages
Page 144 - Shine not in vain ; nor think, though men were none, That heaven would want spectators, God want praise. Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep. All these with ceaseless praise his works behold Both day and night : how often from the steep Of echoing hill or thicket have we heard Celestial voices to the midnight air, Sole, or responsive each to other's note, Singing their great Creator ? oft in bands While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk...
Page 93 - HE SAT, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher — the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. Who hold Zam-Zammah, that ' fire-breathing dragon/ hold the Punjab, for the great green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror's loot.
Page 286 - American, French, I don't care. When you start bombing the brown races of the world, you're an Englishman. You had King Leopold of Belgium and now you have fucking Harry Truman of the USA. You all learned it from the English.
Page 97 - I walked in a desert. And I cried, "Ah, God, take me from this place!" A voice said, "It is no desert.
Page 261 - We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography — to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings.
Page 94 - Wherefore his servants said unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin: and let her stand before the king, and let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat.
Page 48 - In the Pisa hospital she had seen the English patient for the first time. A man with no face. An ebony pool. All identification consumed in a fire.4 Common sense tells us that we distinguish one person from another by their appearances.
Page 93 - Claudius, and Nero, while they were in power, were falsified through terror, and after their death were written under the irritation of a recent hatred. Hence my purpose is to relate a few facts about Augustus — more particularly his last acts, then the reign of Tiberius, and all which follows, without either bitterness or partiality, from any motives to which I am far removed.
Page 141 - The ends of the earth are never the points on a map that colonists push against, enlarging their sphere of influence. On one side servants and slaves and tides of power and correspondence with the Geographical Society. On the other the first step by a white man across a great river, the first sight (by a white eye) of a mountain that has been there forever.