Fernando is a writer and editor living in Seattle, Washington. In this essay, Fernando examines how the narrative structure of The English Patient serves as a criticism of traditional historiography.
In The English Patient, the title character is a nameless, severely burned man cared for by a young nurse at the end of World War II. His only possession is a copy of The Histories by Herodotus, into which he has pasted his own writings as well as clippings from other books, creating a collage of knowledge, observations, and unrelated events.
As the patient discusses his love of The Histories with Hana, his nurse, he says of Herodotus:
I see him more as one of those spare men of the desert who travel from oasis to oasis, trading legends as if it is the exchange.....
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