The colonial reckoning “The English Patient” adaptation couldn’t capture

Sri Lankan poet-turned-author Michael Ondaatje’s 1992 novel “The English Patient” is a lyrical, highly detailed exploration of love across the decades and how its sacred qualities overcome time and geography. Written in a fragmented, poetic style by Ondaatje, the novel tells the story of a World War II nurse named Hana (Juliette Binoche in the movie) caring for a severely burned man (played by Ralph Fiennes in the adaptation) suffering from amnesia. With the help of a thief named Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe) who has lost his thumbs, and a Sikh bomb expert (Naveen Andrews), the trio learn about the burned man, dubbed “the English patient,” and his past, which includes an affair with the beautiful and wealthy Katharine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas).

Because of Ondaatje’s specific writing style, director Anthony Minghella found the task of adapting the novel daunting: “Its gifts, in a way, are very elusive and are very much connected with the beauty of language, which is probably the thing that the film is least good at conveying.” Ondaatje worked on the script with Minghella, sharing the belief that most people seeing the movie never read the book in the first place. The book’s events happen over several years, and rather than focus on complex themes of national identity and the fluid connections between time and history, it made more sense for the movie to situate the love story between the English patient and Katharine as the primary narrative, with a parallel romance between nurse Hana and bomb expert Kip.

The film (which turns 30 this year) parcels out the mystery of the English patient’s identity over a near three-hour run time, whereas the book has no chronological structure and alternates between the past and the present, telling the patient’s story backward. The reader is an outside observer and learns about things in a realistic manner. No one can predict when a life-changing moment will happen in their lives and the same goes for Hana, the patient, and everyone else. Information is given to them and it takes several chapters for the reader, and the character, to understand the significance of that information.

Ondaatje, a Sri Lankan man living in Canada, makes multi­culturalism and the history of exoticizing the desert key themes in “The English Patient.” This is evident in the depiction of Kip, a Sikh man finding his way in the English world of colonialism. In the book, Kip loves the English and the West — so much so that he sings their songs and wears their clothes. The movie touches on these themes here and there, but in the book Kip is, at times, more important than the English patient himself.

Unlike the movie, where Kip meets Hana as he tries to defuse a minefield on the road she’s traveling, the novel shows him accidentally stumble upon her playing the piano at the villa where she’s been holed up since the novel’s first page. As the two grow closer, he tells her about his family and how he was expected to become a doctor but instead decided to enter the army and, through the mentorship of Lord Suffolk (a real-life person), became a bomb expert.

Several chapters are devoted to Kip’s stories of defusing bombs and saving English lives, all aided by Lord Suffolk’s encouragement. As Kip says, Lord Suffolk is the first person to treat him like a fellow Englishman and not a foreigner. However, when the atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima—illustrating how much time passes in the book compared to the movie— Kip becomes so wild with rage that he plans to shoot the patient, believing the unnamed man represents every evil the English and the West have committed against Asia. Kip feels that if Japan were a white country, those in charge would not have been so hasty to drop the bomb. The patient welcomes death, but Kip can’t pull the trigger. With the explosion of the atomic bomb, Kip’s belief system is literally shattered, leaving him to find a new path in life that, sadly, doesn’t include Hana.

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Kip is such a large part of the narrative that the novel even ends on his character. The movie ends with Hana and Kip parting because his job takes him to other areas of the country. They agree to meet again, but Kip completely discards his Western life. Years pass and Kip becomes the doctor his family wanted him to be. He is married and has two children. He says he received letters from Hana for a year, but never responded to them.

This bittersweet ending is paralleled alongside the story of the patient and Katharine. The love affair between the English patient, revealed as Hungarian cartographer László Almásy, and Katharine Clifton is told on-screen similarly to how it presents on the page, albeit in chronological order and as the overarching story. The pair meet and engage in a powerfully charged romance despite Katharine being married. Almásy and Katharine have a highly sexual affair with moments of extreme toxicity, trying to repel each other because of their awareness that outside forces are pulling them apart. Katharine takes her frustration out on Almásy in the novel by not only hitting him (also seen on screen), but throwing plates and stabbing him with forks. When people notice his plentiful bruises, Almásy makes up excuses, leading them to think he’s a klutz.

The couple’s affair is eventually discovered by Katharine’s jealous husband, Geoffrey (Colin Firth), who has been spying on her. Geoffrey, accompanied by his wife in a biplane, travels to Cairo in order to kill his competition and commit a murder/ suicide by crashing the airplane into the desert sand where Almásy, preparing to leave, is waiting. The crash kills Geoffrey and leaves Katharine severely wounded. Almásy shelters Katharine in a cave and goes off to get help, eventually evading arrest and stealing an airplane to rescue her.

Geoffrey is British Intelligence in the book and works as an aerial photographer. Because the intelligence agency knows of Almásy’s affair with Katharine, they assume Geoffrey’s death is suspicious and imprison Almásy as he tries to get help. His story then jumps ahead three months as he returns to the cave and finds Katharine dead. The movie shows this discovery as a tender moment, with only a few days passing and Almásy lying next to Katharine’s recently deceased body, stroking her hair. The book is more macabre, with Almásy making love to Katharine’s body, a final blending of life and death, love and sex, body and mind.

“The English Patient” was nominated for twelve Academy Awards and won nine, including Best Picture. The movie’s sweeping visuals and romantic love story evoked a sentiment similar to 1940s war romances. It was highly praised upon release, though contemporary audiences today place the moment in the “when Oscar gets it wrong” category due to a perceived lack of staying power and quality compared to fellow nominee “Fargo” (1996). Regardless, Minghella’s film is an utterly beautiful and roman­tic story, a daunting feat considering how equally beautiful, though different, its source material is.

Excerpted from “But Have You Read the Book? Romance Edition: 40 Love Stories That Inspired Our Favorite Films” by Kristen Lopez. Copyright © 2026. Available from Running Press, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.