National identity is a significant part of how individual characters in The English Patient conceptualize themselves, their social obligations, and their roles in the world. Since the novel takes place immediately before and during World War II, the characters’ ability (or refusal) to align themselves with certain nations is a particularly fraught issue, and questions of loyalty and betrayal are frequently tied to the novel’s conversations about national identity. While the text foregrounds nationality as a theme, it ultimately suggests that nationalist divisions—and perhaps the very existence of nation-states—are largely to blame for the war.

Almásy sees the desert as a place where he can shed any national allegiance or identity. Describing the European explorers’ relationships with the Bedouin, he says, “Gradually we became nationless. I came to hate nations. We are deformed by nation-states” (138). The desert, unlike other parts of the world, cannot be owned. Being in the desert helped Almásy and his colleagues see where their national identities ended and their personal identities began: “All of us, even those with European homes and children in the distance, wished to remove the clothing of our countries” (139). Almásy went so far as to use the desert’s liminal nature to get rid of his own identity entirely: “But I wanted to erase my name and the place I had come from” (139).