The English Patient wears the triple crown: it is profound, beautiful and heart-quickening

Toni Morrison

All the allure of early twentieth-century desert exploration is contained in Ondaatje's beautiful, spare narrative … A wise and graceful book about history itself, both the events that are its raw material and the human values that shape it

Sunday Times

Language of such riveting beauty that one is made to stop and stare

Observer

One of the most innovative and liberating writers of our time

Guardian

The best piece of fiction in English I've read in years

Independent on Sunday

Ondaatje has now written the extraordinary novel we have been awaiting from him: The English Patient is a masterpiece

Financial Times