English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

'Ondaatje's novel about love and confusion set at the end of the Second World War follows a small group of shell-shocked characters. 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' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
'Magnificent... All the allure of early 20th Century desert exploration is contained in Ondaatje's beautiful, spare narrative... A wise and graceful book about history itself, both the events that are its raw material and the human values that shape it' Sunday Times
'Profound, beautiful and heart-quickening' Toni Morrison
'Ondaatje has written a popular novel, a war story and spy story, tingling with mystery and sexual tension, which is also a grave and true image of life' Peter Craven, The Age, Melbourne
'A magic carpet of a novel that soars across worlds and times... as rare and spellbinding a net of dreams as any that has emerged in recent years' Pico Iyer, Time
'The best piece of fiction in English I've read in
several years'
Edmund White, Independent on Sunday