The English Patient4

4th proposal

THE ENGLISH PATIENT

Fotos F.Ramsauer

Fotos F.Ramsauer

A book by Michael Ondaatje, which I highly recommend.

Ondaatje tells us in this eponymous, poetic and romantic book, above all, the story of  four people who are, in every sense, badly hurt during the second world war.

The first of these is the English Patient. His skin is burnt black and he is beyond recognition because of a plane accident. He is now in a deserted villa in Tuscany, which had before been used as a military hospital. The English Patient is left behind and together with him remains Hana a Canadian nurse. Due to the fact that the territory is controlled by the English they would like to know who this patient is. They are afraid that he is a Nazi.

Hana has seen in her very young life tragedies (loss of her beloved father, her lover, her unborn child and many dying soldiers) almost impossible to imagine and she seems not to be sure of being still capable to feel anymore.

Then there is Caravaggio a former thief. His thumbs have been cut so he cannot steal anymore. That’s why is first trying to find Hana, the daughter of a friend of his.

The forth character is Kip, the Sikh sapper. His job is to disarm bombs but even he can’t disarm the last bomb. Kip lived his first part of life in India, whose culture influenced him but he then left his country for England, nation for which he is fighting the war. He does not really belong to any place.

These above mentioned people are in the mentioned villa, where they play out their interior darkness.

I especially love also the episodes, where Ondaatje describes the places/oases the English Patient loved in the Libyan desert, because in the past he was a mapmaker. Almasy was enthralled by the endless wasteland, the star-lit nights or the sandstroms or fata morganas.

Here some more fotos of that surrounding which I, too, found unspeakably beautiful.

Fotos F. Ramsauer

The film by the director Anthony Minghella features: Ralph Fiennes (Almasy), Karin Scott Thomas (Katharine Clfton), Juliette Binoche (Hana-nurse), Naveen Andrews (Kip-the sapper)

more about “English Patient“, posted with vodpod