The English Patient is one of my least favorite novels of all time. Michael Ondaatje's prose is the literary equivalent of having a gossamer skein repeatedly thrown over your face and then dragged away; fleeting and insubstantial, but just present enough to be really fucking annoying. Michael Ondaatje, Canadian novelist and poet whose musical prose and poetry were created from a blend of myth, history, jazz, memoirs, and other forms. I had read ‘The English Patient’ and other Ondaatje stories previously and I'd seen the film several times but Pico Iyer’s vivid Introduction in this Everyman’s Library Edition of 2011 boldly welcomed me back into the depth and the beauty of the author’s words. About Michael Ondaatje: He was born to a Burgher family of Dutch-Tamil-Sinhalese-Portuguese origin. Learn more about Ondaatje’s life and career. He moved to England with his mother in 1954. Michael Ondaatje, winner of the Golden Man Booker prize with The English Patient. Photograph: Teri Pengilley/The Guardian O n Sunday night, Michael Ondaatje stepped on to … Perhaps his best-known work is the novel The English Patient. In 1992, for only the second time in its history, the Booker Prize was divided between two books: Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient and Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger.