Some books become landmarks in your life. It becomes more than something you read when you return to its pages again and again, like a familiar scent or a half-remembered dream. For me, that book is The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje.

Ondaatje’s prose was difficult. It didn’t care for neatness. The narrative was fragmented, the rhythm unpredictable—the whole narrative is a long lyrical poem. But I stuck with it, turning each page slowly, sometimes painfully. And I’m glad I did. While others found it disjointed, that was precisely what drew me in. It was too poetic for the mainstream, too fragmented for easy consumption, and too sensual for readers who prioritize plot. That’s what I enjoyed about it then—and still do.

When I went to university to pursue my IT degree, The English Patient became a silent friend. I read it during long, lonely afternoons in my hostel room as a soothing escape from the chaos of university life. Through Ondaatje’s pages, I could retreat to the worn walls of Villa San Girolamo, into the burned silence of the English Patient, and the sun-drenched memories of the Cave of Swimmers. I must have read the book ten times throughout the years. 

The story unfolds in the same way that memory does: disorganized, sensory, and half-lit. We learn about the English Patient’s past before, during, and after WWII. Of Katharine Clifton and their forbidden love. Of Hana, the grieving nurse who cares for him in the villa. Of Caravaggio, the thief turned British spy with missing thumbs. Of Kip, a gentle Indian sapper who dismantles bombs and falls in love with Hana despite their cultural differences.

The patient’s only possession is a battered, annotated copy of Herodotus’ Histories that survived the flames when his plane crashed in the desert. The crash badly burned him and caused amnesia. He couldn’t remember his name and lost his identity, but his voice led many to believe he was English. In time, we learn he is actually László de Almásy, a Hungarian cartographer and desert adventurer. Almásy’s character is loosely based on a real-life counterpart, Count László Almásy, a Hungarian aristocrat and explorer.

I remember reading passages aloud to my lover during late-night chats. We watched the movie adaptation on VCD, but I hated it. It lacked the haunting lyricism of the novel. The lushness of Ondaatje’s words cannot be translated to screen. His sentences breathe, linger, and seep in. They don’t just move the story forward. They remain in you long after you finish the novel.

I haven’t read the book in years. Maybe it’s time to read it again. Some parts of me have changed; others haven’t. I suspect the story will read differently now, the way all great books do when you return to them older and bruised with life.

There’s one passage that’s followed me for years, so much so that I placed it on my About Me page:

“She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.”

This quote refers to Katharine Clifton, but I feel it suits me as well.

There are many other lines that have stayed with me through the years. There are too many to list, but here are a few that still haunt me:

“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography—to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.”

― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“I believe this. When we meet those we fall in love with, there is an aspect of our spirit that is historian, a bit of a pedant who reminisces or remembers a meeting when the other has passed by innocently…but all parts of the body must be ready for the other, all atoms must jump in one direction for desire to occur.”

― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“Moments before sleep are when she feels most alive, leaping across fragments of the day, bringing each moment into the bed with her like a child with schoolbooks and pencils. The day seems to have no order until these times, which are like a ledger for her, her body full of stories and situations.”

― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“This was the time in her life that she fell upon books as the only door out of her cell. They became half her world.”

― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“In the desert the most loved waters, like a lover’s name, are carried blue in your hands, enter your throat. One swallows absence.”

― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“Sometimes when she is able to spend the night with him they are wakened by the three minarets of the city beginning their prayers before dawn. He walks with her through the indigo markets that lie between South Cairo and her home. The beautiful songs of faith enter the air like arrows, one minaret answering another, as if passing on a rumor of the two of them as they walk through the cold morning air, the smell of charcoal and hemp already making the air profound. Sinners in a holy city.”

― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

The English Patient is not a book you finish or a book you can read casually. It’s a book you carry, absorb, and savor.

And I’ll keep returning to it.

As long as I need to remember how language can ruin you.

And heal you.

And leave you haunted in the best way.