The English patient [electronic resource] / Michael Ondaatje.
Finally available on unabridged audio. With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminates this book like flashes of heat lighting.
Record details
- ISBN: 9781415939581 (sound recording : OverDrive Audio Book)
- ISBN: 1415939586 (sound recording : OverDrive Audio Book)
- Publisher: [Santa Ana, Calif.] : Books on Tape, 2007.
Content descriptions
General Note: | Downloadable audio file. Title from: Title details screen. Unabridged. Duration: 8:28:02. |
Participant or Performer Note: | Read by Christopher Cazenove. |
System Details Note: | Requires OverDrive Media Console Requires OverDrive Media Console (file size: 121686 KB). Mode of access: World Wide Web. |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | World War, 1939-1945 > Fiction. Italy > Fiction. |
Genre: | DOWNLOADABLE AUDIOBOOK. Historical fiction. War stories. Audiobooks. |
Other Formats and Editions
Electronic resources
- AudioFile Reviews : AudioFile Reviews 1994 February
Michael Ondaatje's novel, winner of the England's 1993 Booker Prize, is a perfect candidate for audio. A burn patient is cared for in a ruined Italian villa after the retreat of the Germans by a young nurse, a former spy and thief and a Sikh who clears the area of mines. Their various lives, past and current, entwine in a mystical novel full of vivid images which are marvelously conveyed through oral interpretation. Michael York presents an elegant narration--beautifully suited to the text. He carefully projects the subtle accents of each character with a smooth and polished delivery. His tone matches the author's and compliments each character. Making full use of the evocative language, York portrays the scenes and relationships with distinction. The abridgment is skillfull though there is a haunting sense that one hasn't experienced the entirety of the text. For serious fiction lovers, this is an audiobook not to be missed. R.F.W. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award winner Copyright 1999 AudioFile Reviews - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 1992 August
Canadian poet/novelist Ondaatje (In the Skin of a Lion, 1987, etc.) assembles, mosaic-fashion, the lives of four occupants of an Italian villa near Florence at the end of WW II. The war-damaged villa, its grounds strewn with mines, has gone from to German stronghold to Allied hospital, its sole occupants now a young Canadian nurse, Hana, and her last patient, a born victim. They are joined by David Caravaggio, an Italian-Canadian friend of Hana's father but also a thief used by Western intelligence, and Kip (Kirpal Singh), an Indian sapper in the British Army. So: a dying man and two wrecks--for David has become a morphine addict after his recent capture and torture, while Hana, who coped with the loss of her soldier sweetheart and their child (aborted), has been undone by news of her father's death. Only Kip is functioning efficiently, defusing the mines. Ondaatje superimposes on this tableau the landscape of the pre-war North African desert, with its strange brotherhood of Western explorers, filtered through the consciousness of Hana's patient. Though he claims to have forgotten his identity during the fiery fall from his plane into the desert, it seems the putative Englishman is the Hungarian explorer (and sometime German spy) Almasy; but such puzzles count for less than his erudition (his beloved Herodotus is the novel's presiding spirit), his internationalism (``Erase nations!''), and his doomed but incandescent love affair with the bride of an English explorer--an affair ignited by the desert and Herodotus, and a dramatic contrast to the ``formal celibacy'' of the love developing at the villa between Hana and Kip, which ends (crudely) when Kip learns of the Hiroshima bombing, discovers his racial identity, and quits the white man's war. A challenging, disorienting, periodically captivating journey without maps, best when least showy, as in the marvelous account of Kip's adoption by an eccentric English peer, his bomb-disposal instructor. Copyright 1999 Kirkus Reviews - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 1993 December #1
Who is this wounded soldier living at an abandoned Italian villa near the end of World War II? He does not remember his name, only that he is British, but pieces of his conversation betray his knowledge. For the woman nursing him, his past does not matter. But as their twosome is invaded by two others, all focus shifts to his ``true'' identity. Ondaatje deals with the culture he knows best: the British family, living in Canada, relocated during the war. Poet that he is, he replaces narrative with vivid, lyric snapshots. Listeners may have to periodically rewind the tape to recall who is who, since the four ruminating voices, narrated by actor Michael York, are seldom identified by name, and flashbacks add to the confusion. But this book is best appreciated if listeners suspend a focus on the immediate narrative line, picking up bits of the story here and there, retaining enough imagery that eventually they understand a much greater whole. As such, it's a masterpiece. For most collections.-- Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, ``Soho Weekly News,'' New York Copyright 1993 Cahners Business Information. - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 1992 September #1
In an Italian villa at the end of World War II, a young nurse cares for a soldier so horribly burned that he cannot be identified. Both patients and medical staff have decamped from this makeshift hospital, but Hana perseveres, worn out by the war and yet strangely linked to the dying man. Then a friend of her father arrives--a thief-turned-spy who recalls Hana as a young girl in Canada--and raises questions about ``the English patient,'' claiming that he is instead a Hungarian who spied for the Third Reich. Finally, they are joined by a young Sikh named Kip, a soldier with a nearby English battalion who defuses the bombs left behind by the Germans. The discovery of the patient's identity, Kip's successful defusion of several bombs, and the complex emotional interaction of all four characters creates a tension that is nicely heightened by Ondaatje's stately, luminous prose. The prose is so stately, in fact, that Kip's final outrage at the moral perfidy of the Western world he has served so loyally takes a moment to hit. When it does, the novel moves beyond the poetic to achieve moral stature. Highly recommended for literary collections.-- Barbara Hoffert, ``Library Journal'' Copyright 1992 Cahners Business Information. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 1992 July #3
A poet's sensitive, deep-seeing eye, a fluid, sensuous prose and imaginative juxtapositions of characters and events distinguish Canadian author Ondaatje's impressive novels ( Coming Through Slaughter ; In the Skin of a Lion ; etc.). Here again he brings together disparate characters whose lives intersect at a crucial moment in history, and introduces real-life figures who add dimension and credibility to the story. The four people who take shelter in an abandoned villa in Italy during the final days of WW II are in retreat from a world gone mad; each of them is bent on protecting painful memories and pondering irreplaceable losses. The mysterious ``English patient'' has been horribly burned while parachuting into the Libyan desert; his face unrecognizable and his identity unknown, he gradually reveals his tragic story through the prompting of David Caravaggio, a professional thief and former spy whose hands and spirit have been maimed by Nazi torturers. Caravaggio has come to the villa in search of Hana, a woman who is nursing the burned man, whom Caravaggio has known since her childhood in Toronto. Close to emotional breakdown herself, dry-souled Hana is nourished by her love for Kip, a Singh demolitions expert whose perilous craft reflects the fragility of all their lives. Each is ``playing a game of secrets,'' which Ondaatje reveals in a suspenseful narrative whose gripping scenes (a desert sandstorm; the defusing of live bombs) call to mind the sudden brilliance of subjects illuminated by Caravaggio's artist namesake, to whose work Ondaatje elliptically refers. If the events of the novel's closing pages seem forced, they underscore Ondaatje's message about the lingering effects of war's brutality. (Oct.) Copyright 1992 Cahners Business Information. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 1993 October #4
Canadian author Ondaatje offers a poetic novel set in a desolate Italian villa in the final days of WWII--a one-week PW bestseller--and an evocative account of a visit with his family in Sri Lanka. (Dec.) Copyright 1993 Cahners Business Information.