by Murtada
The English Patient, the novel by Michael Ondaatje, has won the Golden Booker prize. The one-off award, voted for by the public, commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Man Booker prize. The shortlist of five novels was selected by a panel of judges from the 51 previous winners of the Man Booker, which honors the best novels written in English and published in Britain or Ireland. The book, which I read after the film won 9 Oscars in 1996, has always been a favorite. Not only for its beautifully written lyrical romantic love story but for its exploration of the fallacy of nationalism.
The characters in The English Patient - Hungarian, Indian, Canadian and English - form artistic allegiances rather than arbitrary ones based along geographical lines. Those themes resonate even more today, as we are in the midst of a volatile debate about immigration...
Perhaps the story of the patient who only became “English” after his face was completely burned and his identity erased is captured best in the note that the elegant Katherine Clifton leaves for her lover as she lays dying in a cave in the Sahara. We hear it in Kristin Scott Thomas’ beautiful narration:
We die. We die rich with lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we've entered and swum up like rivers. Fears we've hidden in - like this wretched cave. I want all this marked on my body. We are the real countries. Not boundaries drawn on maps with the names of powerful men.
The quote comes from Ondaatje’s book, paraphrased slightly by the late great Anthony Minghella who adapted the screenplay and directed. Of the many Oscars it won Minghella lost the screenplay award, which always baffled me because I thought the adaptation was the film’s strongest element. For example Clifton is a memory or an illusion in Almasy’s head in the book, yet in the film she’s the most alluring character, almost wholly coming from Minghella’s writing. Ondaatje’s acknowledged the film’s role in keeping his book alive, in an interview he gave to The Guardian after the Booker news was announced:
Well, it already had a second afterlife with the film, right? And that was a bolt of lightning that I wasn’t expecting. And then this – suddenly redoing the whole thing again.
Are you a fan of The English Patient or a skeptic like Elaine Benes?