A masterpiece ― Financial Times Magnificent ― Sunday Times Extraordinary ― Daily Telegraph The English Patient wears the triple crown: it is profound, beautiful and heart-quickening -- Toni Morrison Language of such riveting beauty that one is made to stop and stare ― Observer One of the most innovative and liberating writers of our time ― Guardian The best piece of fiction in English I've read in years ― Independent on Sunday An exotic, consuming and richly inspired novel of passion. In its elegance and its satisfactions it resembles no book I know -- Richard Ford Feats of daring espionage, aeroplanes mysteriously buried beneath desert sand, archaeological exploration in the Sahara and nail-biting accounts of bomb-disposal against a nervous clock . this is the real thing: muscular, resonant, alive ― Spectator In descriptive prose of spectacular beauty, he invents a desert world which is both physical and imaginative. This is one of the few truly great post-war novels ― Irish Times A magic carpet of a novel that soars across worlds and times . As rare and spellbinding net of dreams as any that has emerged in recent years ― Time In this masterful novel Ondaatje weaves a beautiful and light-handed prose through the histories of people caught up in love and war. A rich and compelling work of fiction -- Don DeLillo Ondaatje is one of North America's finest novelists . the spell of his haunted villa remains with us, inviting us to reread passages for the pure pleasures of being there ― Wall Street Journal A tale of many pleasures--an intensely theatrical tour de force but grounded in Michael Ondaatje's strong feeling for distant times and places ― New York Times Book Review It is an adventure, mystery, romance, and philosophical novel in one ... Michael Ondaatje is a novelist with the heart of a poet ― Chicago Tribune Sensuous, mysterious, rhapsodic, it transports the reader to another world . Ondaatje's most probing examination yet of the nature of identity ― San Francisco Chronicle A novel so compelling that you will likely read it as I did, in a single sitting. But it's also one of those rare novels with so much poetry and lucidity that you will find yourself reading it a second and third time, savouring it beauty and intelligence for weeks . The English Patient is simply one of the best novels I have read in years -- Russell Banks
