Michael Ondaatje. THE ENGLISH PATIENT (Picador, #4.25).

* IN hindsight, Michael Ondaatje might well regret having used Coming

Through Slaughter for the title of another book; the phrase captures so

well what binds the characters of this exotic and breathtakingly written

novel together.

Set at the end of the Second World War, the English Patient combines

T. E. Lawrence with White Mischief as it reveals the passions,

betrayals, and lost illusions of the unlikely quartet thrown together in

the Villa San Girolamo, a dilapidated hospital evacuated save for Hana,

a Canadian nurse, and the English patient, a burned pilot. Into their

refuge come Caravaggio, a former thief and spy, and Kip, a British Army

sapper, and it soon becomes clear that this is not the calm after the

storm but the calm before it.