The English Patient

How does the novel use cartography to talk about ideas like identity, community, and history? What does geography mean to different characters throughout the text?

Analyze Caravaggio’s character arc throughout the novel. How is he shaped by his professional identity as a thief and his reactions to the concepts of intimacy and community? What is his role and significance in The English Patient as a whole?

What is the role of the desert in the novel? What influence does the desert have in the European characters’ personal and political lives? How does the desert reflect some of the novel’s key themes and ideas?

How are race and racism depicted in the novel? How is colonialism portrayed and critiqued?

Memories have an important role in the novel. What is the relationship between memory and trauma? What does the novel suggest about the nature of memory, and/or the connections between past and present?

Consider the presence of romance and/or sex in the novel. How are love and sex conceived of, and experienced, by the different characters? What is the relationship between love/sex and violence?

Does Caravaggio’s identification of the English patient ultimately resolve the narrative? Why or why not? How do other characters—Hana, Kip, Katharine—come to terms with previously hidden or unrealized aspects of their own identities?

Analyze the nonlinear structure of the novel. Why do you think Ondaatje chose to tell the story this way? What does it add to your reading of the text?