Now that The English Patient has become one of the most beloved and honored romances of the past twenty years -- first as a bestselling novel that won the Booker Prize and the Governor General's Award, then as an award winning movie that took six Baftas and nine Oscars -- can we erase from its millions of fans' memories the falsehood that the Hungarian spy Count Laszlo de Almásy ever would have had an affair with the married British woman Katherine Clifton, and re-tell the story accurately, showing that his great passion was for a young Nazi soldier named Hans Entholt? Moreover, although the core of the story is that he suffered burns over his entire body, became addicted to morphine, and died of an overdose in Italy, in actuality, he was never burned, and lived until 1951 when he was killed by dysentery in Salzburg, Austria.
All these changes beg why novelist Michael Ondaatje used Laszlo de Almásy's name. He made up Katherine Clifton, loosely basing her and her husband on Dorothy and Sir Robert Clayton East-Clayton.
Almásy's love letters to Hans Entholt have just surfaced at the Heinrich Barth Institute for African Studies in Cologne, confirming long widespread rumors that he was gay. Other letters reveal his sexual relations with "Egyptian princes." Born in 1895, Almásy was exclusively homosexual, not bi. (He appears above, in sunglasses.) According to the Daily Mail news story, he died "never having once slept with a woman."
It's been known for decades Laszlo de Almásy was gay. That didn't stop heterosexual writer Michael Ondaatje from heterosexualizing his life like so many. Heterosexuals have zero problem heterosexualizing everything and will look at you like they have no idea what they are doing.
Posted by: Cole | April 05, 2010 at 06:43 PM
One of my favorite books and movies--I didn't even know it was based on a true character. Thank you for uncovering the backstory.
Posted by: Jameson Currier | April 06, 2010 at 04:44 PM
I'm siding with Elaine on 'Seinfeld.'
Posted by: Sandy | April 07, 2010 at 06:17 AM
The novel appears to follow a novella from the 1930s, Karl Capek's Meteor (from Trilogy), which is grafted on to the story of a mysterious historical figure. I've never been comfortable with the English Patient for this reason. I highly recommend the trilogy.
Posted by: David in Toronto | April 07, 2010 at 01:34 PM
Maybe the vast majority of people- let's say- about 93%- would rather see a good-old fashioned romantic epic of two heterosexuals fornicating behind the good husband's back.
Posted by: Boo | April 09, 2010 at 01:39 PM