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The English Patient

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The English Patient

By: Michael Ondaatje
Narrated by: Jennifer Ehle
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With unsettling beauty and intelligence, this Golden Man 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 centre 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.

©1992 Michael Ondaatje (P)2020 Audible, Ltd Classics Historical Fiction Fiction Heartfelt Italy
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This is my favourite book. It's sheer beauty haunts me, but it has been taken to a whole new level with Jennifer Ehle's voice. There were times when I just stopped whatever it was I was doing when I listened and found myself staring into this broken world, quite overcome as each word entered my ear and seeped somehow into my blood. No other writer arrests me in this way. No other words conjure such alertness in me. Nowhere is more palpable than this desert, these loves and this villa in Italy at the end of the second world war.

Just my favourite book. ever.

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Having read The English Patient three times, watched it many more, read the screenplay, too, I anticipated this performance with that poetic sensation you feel stepping into your favourite art gallery to revisit a personally favourite painting. I have not been disappointed, in fact listening has been more beautiful than I imagined it would be. There are a few mispronounced Italian words, but Jennifer Ehle's performance is so personal and sounds so intimate, that this production is another of this text I will return to.

Beautiful

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I was hooked from the beginning. I've seen the film, but the book weaves so much more into the characters and story. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

Excellent story

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Brilliant book. The narrator doesnt change voice much for individual characters making it sometimes hard to keep a track on who is talking

sometimes hard to follow

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I loved this story, which I had enjoyed the film
adaptation, but the full version was so much richer. Jennifer Ehle was masterful in her narration and I was utterly transported, to the desert, Italy and to the cave of swimmers.

Transported!

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