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As I mentioned several posts back, I saw the film version of “The English Patient” before reading the book, an interesting phenomenon. It could be the other way around. What’s different about the two? The film and book versions of “The English Patient” are different stories about the same characters—if that’s possible. Michael Ondaatje, who collaborated on the film, said, “What we have now are two stories, one with the pace and detail of a three-hundred page novel and one tha

Last week, I identified two modes of narration in “The English Patient,” the (nearly) invisible narrator who tells the story of the four characters living in the ruined Italian villa, and the many stories the characters tell each other—Count Almasy being prominent among them. So how do these modes interact? Are there mise en abymes lurking? In order to begin to answer these questions, I should bravely state what I think is the point of “The English Patient.” There is a level