The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (1992) Bloomsbury

A modern classic of English literature - the 'patient' is a story about a Hungarian who helped the Germans in WWII.  A former cartographer, he fell in an ill-fated love affair with a colleague's wife and suffered burns over his whole body in an airplane crash.  The Bedouin transported him to a British hospital in Cairo and from there he was transferred north until he reached a field hospital in Italy in a Villa.  There we meet a nurse, a thief and a sapper.

Won the Booker Prize.