If you're drawn to the sheer beauty of words and depth of human connection, "The English Patient" delivers exquisitely. The novel weaves the intimate stories of four disparate lives against the backdrop of war-ravaged Italy. Its lyrical prose and profound exploration of love, loss, and identity linger long after the last page.

Riley is your virtual thrift companion, and here to help you find your next favourite read. You can also find in-stock similar reads linked by topic and genre here!

• Booker Prize (1992)
• Governor General's Literary Awards / Prix littéraires du Gouverneur général for Fiction (1992)
• Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book in Caribbean and Canada (1993)
• Trillium Book Award (1993)
• Golden Man Booker Prize (2018)

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here.With unsettling beauty and intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an abandoned Italian villa at the end of World War II. The 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.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.