Michael Ondaatje - The English Patient

17. Can the novel can be seen as a mystery, with the identity of the English patient at its heart? Does Caravaggio’s identification of the patient solve the mystery, or does there remain a question at the end? How do other characters in The English Patient , such as Hana, Kip, and Katherine, discover or come to terms with their own identities?

18. How would you describe Ondaatje’s style: does the story resemble a film perhaps, or a dream? Why has he chosen this mode in which to write this particular tale? What is his purpose in making the action move backward and forward in time?

19. The English Patient refers explicitly to Rudyard Kipling’s Kim . If you know this novel, how does its presence within the text contribute to Ondaatje’s theme? In what way, if any, do the characters in The English Patient correspond to those in Kim? Is it significant that Kip was born in Lahore?

BOOKS BY MICHAEL ONDAATJE

COMING THROUGH SLAUGHTER

This novel brings to life the fabulous, colorful panorama of New Orleans in the first flush of the jazz era; it is the story of Buddy Bolden, the first of the great trumpet players, some say the originator of jazz, who was a genius, a guiding spirit, and the king of that time and place.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-76785-5

THE ENGLISH PATIENT

Winner of the Booker Prize

During the final moments of World War II, four damaged people come together in a deserted Italian villa. As their stories unfold, a complex tapestry of image and emotion is woven, leaving them inextricably connected by the brutal circumstances of the war.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-74520-4

RUNNING IN THE FAMILY

In the late 1970s, Michael Ondaatje returned to his native country of Sri Lanka. Recording his journey through the druglike heat and intoxicating fragrances of the island, Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family.

Memoir/Literature/978-0-679-74669-0

ALSO AVAILABLE:

Anil’s Ghost , 978-0-375-72437-4

The Cinnamon Peeler , 978-0-679-77913-1

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid , 978-0-679-76786-2

Divisadero , 978-0-307-27932-3

Handwriting , 978-0-375-70541-0

In the Skin of a Lion , 978-0-679-77266-8

Lost Classics , 978-0-385-72086-1

Vintage Ondaatje , 978-1-4000-7744-1

VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL

Available at your local bookstore, or visit

www.randomhouse.com