The English Patient

Michael Ondaatje's stunning new novel takes place as the Second World War is ending. It explores the lives of four people, a young woman and three men, who are stranded in a damaged villa north of Florence as the war retreats around them. In an upstairs room lies the badly burned English patient, alive but unable to move. His extraordinary adventures and turbulent love affair in the North African desert before the War provide the focus around which the vivid tales of his companions revolve.

This is a breathtaking story of love and passion that twists through London's Blitz and the intricacies of bomb disposal through the mysterious, often dangerous world of desert exploration. Michael Ondaatje brings his formidable poetic and narrative powers to bear on the destiny of his four characters. In prose that soars he reveals the complex impact of public conflict on private lives. As full of resonances as a dream, The English Patient will stand as Ondaatje's finest work to date.