The English Patient

Inc., New York; McClelland & Stewart Inc., Toronto; and Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd., London, in 1992.

The chapter here called “In Situ” appeared in somewhat different form in The New Yorker.

Owing to limitations of space, all other acknowledgments for permission to reprint previously published material can be found on this page.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ondaatje, Michael, 1943–

The English Patient; a novel / by Michael Ondaatje.

—1st Vintage International ed.

p.      cm.

eISBN: 978-0-307-77662- 4

I World War II, 1939–1945—Italy—Fiction. 2. Italy—Fiction

I. Title.

[PR9199.3.05E54 1993]

813?.54—dc20 93-10492

Random House Web address: http://www.randomhouse.com/

v3.1

In memory of

Skip and Mary Dickinson

For Quintin and Griffin

And for Louise Dennys,

with thanks

“Most of you, I am sure, remember the tragic circumstances of the death of Geoffrey Clifton at Gilf Kebir, followed later by the disappearance of his wife, Katharine Clifton, which took place during the 1939 desert expedition in search of Zerzura.

“I cannot begin this meeting tonight without referring very sympathetically to those tragic occurrences.

“The lecture this evening …”

From the minutes of the Geographical Society meeting

of November 194-, London

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

I The Villa

II In Near Ruins

III Sometime a Fire

IV South Cairo 1930–1938

V Katharine

VI A Buried Plane

VII In Situ

VIII The Holy Forest

IX The Cave of Swimmers

X August

Acknowledgements

Reader’s Guide

Also by This Author

I

The Villa

SHE STANDS UP in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance. She has sensed a shift in the weather. There is another gust of wind, a buckle of noise in the air, and the tall cypresses sway. She turns and moves uphill towards the house, climbing over a low wall, feeling the first drops of rain on her bare arms. She crosses the loggia and quickly enters the house.

In the kitchen she doesn’t pause but goes through it and climbs the stairs which are in darkness and then continues along the long hall, at the end of which is a wedge of light from an open door.

She turns into the room which is another garden—this one made up of trees and bowers painted over its walls and ceiling. The man lies on the bed, his body exposed to the breeze, and he turns his head slowly towards her as she enters.

   Every four days she washes his black body, beginning at the destroyed feet.