texts) into literal images. The English patient writes his own observations into the blank pages of Herodotus. Hana also does the same with books in the villa's library, especially The Last of the Mohicans ('She opens The Last of the Mohicans to the blank page at the back and begins to write in it. There is a man called Caravaggio, a friend of my father's. I have always loved him.') Through this Ondaatje shows the connection between texts, how they are created and conceived. While Hana discloses her feelings in blank pages of books and the English patient writes out his love for Kathaine Clifton, Ondaatje does the same in the novel by quoting endlessly from other texts, such as Kim, The Charterhouse of Parma The Last of the Mohican, Paradise Lost and works of Christopher Smart. On one level this operates to echo and reinforce thematic concerns in the novel. Kim sets up another level of meaning in relation to colonial dispossession and cultural imperialism that foreshadow Kip's realisation at the close of the novel. The Last of the Mohicans is another text written by a white man showing the dispossession and genocide of an Indian race. In both cases they show the European's disregard and disdain for cultures other than their own; a sentiment foregrounded in the novel when the two cities of Japan are destroyed and Kip and Caravaggio agree that this would not have happened if they were a white race. On another level though the