{"product_id":"the-english-patient-isbn-9780679745204","title":"The English Patient","description":"\u003cb\u003eBOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eWarlight\u003c\/i\u003e 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.” —\u003ci\u003eTime\u003c\/i\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe 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.\"A rare and spellbinding web of dreams.\" —\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eTime\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Sensuous, mysterious, rhapsodic, it transports the reader to another world .... Ondaatje's most probing examination yet of the nature of identity.\" —\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Mr. Ondaatje [is] one of North America's finest novelists.... The spell of his haunted villa remains with us, inviting us to reread passages for the pure pleasure of being there.\" —\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eMICHAEL ONDAATJE is the author of six previous novels, a memoir, a nonfiction book on film, and several books of poetry. \u003ci\u003eThe English Patient\u003c\/i\u003e won the Booker Prize and subsequently the Golden Man Booker Prize, given in honor of the Prize's 50th anniversary; \u003ci\u003eAnil's Ghost\u003c\/i\u003e won the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Giller Prize, and the Prix Médicis. Born in Sri Lanka, Michael Ondaatje now lives in Toronto.She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance. She has sensed a shift in the weather. There is another gust of wind, a buckle of noise in the air, and the tall cypresses sway. She turns and moves uphill toward the house, climbing over a low wall, feeling the first drops of rain on her bare arms. She crosses the loggia and quickly enters the house.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the kitchen she doesn't pause but goes through it and climbs the stairs which are in darkness and then continues along the long hall, at the end of which is a wedge of light from an open door.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe turns into the room which is another garden--this one made up of trees and bowers painted over its walls and ceiling. The man lies on the bed, his body exposed to the breeze, and he turns his head slowly towards her as she enters.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEvery four days she washes his black body, beginning at the destroyed feet. She wets a washcloth and holding it above his ankles squeezes the water onto him, looking up as he murmurs, seeing his smile. Above the shins the burns are worst. Beyond purple. Bone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe has nursed him for months and she knows the body well, the penis sleeping like a sea horse, the thin tight hips. Hipbones of Christ, she thinks. He is her despairing saint. He lies flat on his back, no pillow, looking up at the foliage painted onto the ceiling, its canopy of branches, and above that, blue sky.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe pours calamine in stripes across his chest where he is less burned, where she can touch him. She loves the hollow below the lowest rib, its cliff of skin. Reaching his shoulders she blows cool air onto his neck, and he mutters.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat? she asks, coming out of her concentration.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe turns his dark face with its gray eyes towards her. She puts her hand into her pocket. She unskins the plum with her teeth, withdraws the stone and passes the flesh of the fruit into his mouth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe whispers again, dragging the listening heart of the young nurse beside him to wherever his mind is, into that well of memory he kept plunging into during those months before he died.Winner of the Booker Prize","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46299782086885,"sku":"NP9780679745204","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780679745204.jpg?v=1767739197","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-english-patient-isbn-9780679745204","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}