The English Patient tells the story of four very different individuals who find themselves living together in abandoned villa in Northern Italy in the final months of World War II. Hana, a young Canadian nurse, has stayed behind at the villa (previously used as an improvised hospital) to care for the badly burned titular “English Patient,” who is also suffering from amnesia.

Kerewin Holmes, sometime painter and amateur musician, is getting on with her somewhat solitary life in her self-built Tower home on the coast of New Zealand’s South Island, when she is visited by a troubled yet precocious mute child going by the name of Simon. Simon, the victim of the shipwreck of a European vessel in which his parents were presumed killed, is in the care of Joe, a local man of mostly Maori heritage, who strikes up an unlikely friendship with Kerewin based (largely) on his willingness to keep her company playing chess, cooking various largely fish-based meals and drinking alarming quantities of alcohol.