The English Patient & It's Background


	THE ENGLISH PATIENT A STORY BY: MICHAEL ONDAATJE
FEATURING THE DESERT AS SETTING AND THE WAR AS BACKGROUND
Introduction Cast Story Desert World War II Essays Games	The Patient In the cold room, the burnt patient lies, His mind flees Back to Cairo, to the music and the dancing And love prancing, Storming, Burning Hot as the desert sands And Catherine teasing, Easing onto him Only to turn cold as the desert night. In the dark cave, they reveal What in daylight, they deny. And then the frantic trudging under the burning desert sky, For in death they can unite That in life they tear asunder.	Team Guestbook Email Credits Thinkquest Index Main

The English Patient is an exquisite novel about love and confusion set at the end of the Second World War. In descriptive prose of spectacular beauty, Ondaatje invents a desert world that is both physical and imaginative. Against this allure of early twentieth-century desert exploration is the unfolding of the inextricably complicated relationship between Count Almásy and Katharine Clifton who are at once compulsively drawn towards each other and yet each is fiercely reluctant to surrender to each other. Such a manipulation of emotions is stoking at fire, the blaze of which brings about destruction and death.