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 (Click for larger image) 
Ondaatje, Michael.
THE ENGLISH PATIENT.
Toronto, Canada:
McLelland & Stewart,
1992.
Hardcover.
First Edition/First Printing.
302 pages.
Fine/Fine.
Signed. The author's third novel. One of the greatest novels of the 20th century. The first appearance of the title in Canada, where the Sri Lanka-born Michael Ondaatje has now lived for almost fifty years, his entire adult life. The Canadian first appeared simultaneously with the American Edition. Published to enormous critical and popular acclaim, his novel is often called Ondaatje's response to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude", the masterpiece of Magical Realism that Ondaatje considers the model for the modern novel, a "boatload"/"barge" of anything and everything that the author carries in his or her imagination. As with his previous novels, Michael Ondaatje approached the form with fresh eyes, steadfastly resisting even the most accomplished writers' tendency to repeat themselves. By opening up new possibilities for the novel (in a work that moves the reader with the purity of its writing), the complex, multi-layered narrative reinvents and revitalizes the "stream-of-consciousness" modernist style, and poetically melds it with gripping historical romance. When asked to define what a novel is, Ondaatje, who considers himself primarily a poet, replied that it is like a "barge that can carry the cargo called everything". Whether a particular novel succeeds or fails all depends on the writer's intention, genius, and ambition. "Wears the triple crown: It is profound, beautiful, and heart-quickening" (Toni Morrison). The basis of the great Academy Award-winning film by Anthony Minghella, with Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Juliette Binoche. A masterpiece, this is a "must-have" edition for Michael Ondaatje collectors. This copy is prominently and beautifully signed in black fountain pen on the title page by Michael Ondaatje. This title remains available in innumerable subsequent printings. More than fifteen years later, it remains in nth printing as a hardcover, just as "One Hundred Years of Solitude" does. This is one of few signed copies of the First Canadian Edition ($26.99 Price on DJ flap, blurbs from Graham Swift, Russell Banks, Rohinton Mistry, the Canadian critic Diane Schoemperlen, and the Copyright Page statement, "First Canadian Edition") still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. There are far fewer copies of the Canadian First Edition than the British or American Edition available anywhere, and because it is Ondaatje's preferred, "follow-the-flag" edition, it has become (almost) as collectible as the British, which is the true first. A rare signed copy thus. Winner of the Booker Prize in 1992 for "The English Patient". One of the greatest living writers. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER MICHAEL ONDAATJE TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0771068867. $500.00 |
