MICHAEL ONDAATJE (b.1943)
The English Patient. London: Bloomsbury, 1992.
First edition, signed on the title page, with an extensive annotation on the half-title and copyright page, signed at foot, and two photographs of the manuscript draft, one annotated on the verso, signed and dated 22 February 2022; altogether 304 words in autograph. Ondaatje's novel, set against the backdrop of the North African and Italian campaigns of the Second World War, gradually reveals the story of the badly burned 'English' patient – the Hungarian desert explorer László de Almásy – and its effect on three other principal characters: his Canadian nurse, Hana, a Sikh bomb disposal expert, Kip, and the Canadian thief David Caravaggio; its masterful exploration of themes of body, history and nationality is infused with the symbolic presence of the North African desert. The novel won the Booker Prize and the Governor General's Award in 1992, and in 2018 the Golden Man Booker award; it was the basis of a multiple Oscar-winning film in 1996. Ondaatje's two annotations provide a rich insight into his literary method: in the first, he explains his way of beginning a book 'by following a small uncertain clue, entering through a side door of a house in order to discover an unfamiliar story'. The second annotation is on the verso of one of two photographs of double-page openings in Ondaatje's manuscripts for the work (numbered 166-167 and 428-429), showing complex, layered drafts with emendations and cancellations in multiple inks, in each case with a pasted illustration.

Octavo. Original blue cloth, gilt lettering to spine, pictorial dust jacket.

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