The English Patient

A masterpiece * Financial Times * Magnificent * Sunday Times * Extraordinary * Daily Telegraph * The English Patient wears the triple crown: it is profound, beautiful and heart-quickening -- Toni Morrison Language of such riveting beauty that one is made to stop and stare * Observer * One of the most innovative and liberating writers of our time * Guardian * The best piece of fiction in English Ive read in years * Independent on Sunday * An exotic, consuming and richly inspired novel of passion. In its elegance and its satisfactions it resembles no book I know -- Richard Ford Feats of daring espionage, aeroplanes mysteriously buried beneath desert sand, archaeological exploration in the Sahara and nail-biting accounts of bomb-disposal against a nervous clock this is the real thing: muscular, resonant, alive * Spectator * In descriptive prose of spectacular beauty, he invents a desert world which is both physical and imaginative. This is one of the few truly great post-war novels * Irish Times * A magic carpet of a novel that soars across worlds and times As rare and spellbinding net of dreams as any that has emerged in recent years * Time * In this masterful novel Ondaatje weaves a beautiful and light-handed prose through the histories of people caught up in love and war. A rich and compelling work of fiction -- Don DeLillo Ondaatje is one of North Americas finest novelists the spell of his haunted villa remains with us, inviting us to reread passages for the pure pleasures of being there * Wall Street Journal * A tale of many pleasures--an intensely theatrical tour de force but grounded in Michael Ondaatje's strong feeling for distant times and places * New York Times Book Review * It is an adventure, mystery, romance, and philosophical novel in one ... Michael Ondaatje is a novelist with the heart of a poet * Chicago Tribune * Sensuous, mysterious, rhapsodic, it transports the reader to another world Ondaatjes most probing examination yet of the nature of identity * San Francisco Chronicle * A novel so compelling that you will likely read it as I did, in a single sitting. But its also one of those rare novels with so much poetry and lucidity that you will find yourself reading it a second and third time, savouring it beauty and intelligence for weeks The English Patient is simply one of the best novels I have read in years -- Russell Banks

Michael Ondaatje is the author of several novels, as well as a memoir, a non-fiction book on film, and several books of poetry. Among his many Canadian and international recognitions, his novel The English Patient won the Booker Prize and the 2018 Golden Man Booker Prize, and was adapted into a multi-award-winning Oscar movie; and Anils Ghost won the Giller Prize, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and the Prix Mdicis. Born in Sri Lanka, Michael Ondaatje lives in Toronto.