AustLit

'“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.” The eponymous protagonist of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient imagines a mapping of self that traces the hidden and intimate and reveals how we are “marked by nature” and by the flames of connection. It’s not enough “just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books.”' (Introduction)