The English Patient

Four lives meet in an abandoned house on a bombed Italian hill, late in the war: Hannah, the nurse whose spirit has been worn down by death, is amazingly caring for her last surviving patient; Caravaggio, the thief, is trying to rethink his identity, now that his hands, which have been punished, are of no use to him; the Indian Kip, always searching for mines hidden in every land and corner, trusts no one but himself – each of them is preoccupied, in a different way, with the mystery of the man they know only as the English Patient: a nameless, burned victim, lying in her bandages all the time in a room of the house. It is this man’s passionate tales of his memories in the Great Sand Sea and the deserts of Egypt and Libya, in the Cave of Swimmers and the Great Gilf, of the Bedouin and their oases and their magic, his forbidden love, and his fierce anger – those memories ignite the story and reveal mysteries that travel in shocking waves to those fleeing war and death around him at home, changing their lives forever.