The English Patient

Just completed The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. Though have not read, its predecessor, In the Skin of Lion, from where the characters of Hana and Caravaggio has come, the novel is all about the Burned Man. A perfect and a genius way to plot the story, where in the novelist definitely try to take you from the Italian Villa to the Sahara, and this I really loved. The expression to describe the feel of Dryness in the villa and the desert to the wetness of the Oasis in the Desert and the Fountain in the villa is just impeccable. Characters though many have been introduced, substantially only 4 characters, are there around whom the Novel revolves

1. Hana

2. The English Patient

3. Caravaggio

4. Kip

Kip out of the place is an Indian Sikh, where maybe the author has tried to show some pity on the Indian condition during the colonial times. A novel trying to show, hatred but love, emotions but hardness. Tried to amalgamate the Luxuriant land of northern India, with the 5 river names i had long forgotten, (let me see can i write them again here) Ravi , Jhelum, Beas, Chenab, Sutlej(No need to google).

The novel doesn’t seem to get you that musty feeling like the other war novels, where in you just read about the mutinous people, who are jaded by the war and think that everything which the war has brought into is irreparable, though the lastly mention of the Atom Bombs, have tried to get that, but the ironical way it has been put up shows the way you can abhor the west to treat the eastern country like that.

The perennial love story of the English Patient has not to be missed here, which was precocious though the same when compared to the Kip's Love story, Kips story was very preposterous and obtuse.

At sometime it may though seem to be a pell-mell, but then over all, the book is very peremptory leaving the reader no chance but to complete the same.