Critically analyse The English Patient as a modernist novel.

Time in this novel is an elastic element. It ranges back and forth through the years to Almasy’s affair with the wife of another explorer, as well as bringmg in Hana’s experiences as a nurse. Kirpal Singh’s feelings about England and Caravaggio’s adventures as a thief and spy. The past of Hana and Caravaggo from the previous novel In the Skin of a Lion also figures briefly.

The backbone of the novel is its patterning of images, symbols and metaphors – the burning man falling fiom the sky is central with other images linked to it. Ondaatje uses images in an associative way which makes the narrative structure associative like a stream of consciousness.