Best of the Backlist Book Club: "The English Patient" by Michael Ondaatje

Led by Georgia Court, we discuss this Booker Prize-winning novel that traces the intersection of four lives in an abandoned Italian villa. The Best of the Backlist Book Club is led by Georgia Court, meant for reading what lasts, not just what's latest. January's selection is The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. Set in an Italian villa at the end of World War II, the novel brings together four people haunted by love, war, loss, and the lives they lived before finding one another. At the center is a badly burned man known only as the English patient, whose memories gradually reveal a story of obsession, betrayal, and the desert. Winner of the Booker Prize, Ondaatje’s lyrical, fragmented novel explores identity, memory, desire, and the ways history leaves its mark on both bodies and landscapes. We will meet in person at our store location at The Mark, 117 S. Pineapple Ave. The book club is $18, which includes a copy of The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje to be picked up at Bookstore1 any time before our meeting. ABOUT THE BOOK: BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of Warlighttraces the intersection of four damaged lives in an abandoned Italian villa at the end of World War II. “A rare spellbinding web of dreams.” —Time 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. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: MICHAEL ONDAATJE is the author of seven novels, including Coming Through Slaughter, The Cat’s Table, and Warlight; a memoir, Running in the Family; a nonfiction book on film-editing, The Conversations; and several books of poetry, including A Year of Last Things, The Cinnamon Peeler, and Handwriting. Among the international accolades, for all his work, The English Patient received the Booker Prize in 1992 and was made into a film by Anthony Minghella. Born in Sri Lanka, Michael Ondaatje lives in Toronto.