In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje

We learn more about Patrick and Caravaggio’s friendship in The English Patient, when Caravaggio says about Patrick, “Find him a woman in distress and he was lost.” And Hana remembers how Patrick used to joke about Caravaggio’s meticulous shaving and parted hair, which has now softened and he is always unshaven. And so she helps the English patient instead, as if she could turn back time and help Patrick survive.

Patrick's death, which we learn about in the English Patient, is the reason that Hana becomes so dedicated to taking care of Almasy, or the Patient, because Patrick died of burns in World War II when Hana was also in the war, but not close enough to help him. It is because of Patrick’s friendship with Caravaggio, after they met in prison in In The Skin of Lion, that Caravaggio develops his fatherly relationship with Hana, and this is the sole reason he comes to the villa in The English Patient - to find Hana. They appear through Hana's and Caravaggio's thoughts and memories, and Clara and Hana write letters to each other during the course of the story in The English Patient. Patrick, the protagonist of In the Skin of a Lion, and Clara also have minor roles in The English Patient. The place where this is most evident in Ondaatje’s work is with the characters Caravaggio and Hana, who appear in In the Skin of a Lion, and then continue their lives, becoming two of the main characters in The English Patient. Both in beginning and ending a novel, his characters' lives go on, and have gone on, before the writer comes to them. He also starts a novel by seeing a scene in his mind's eye of a character doing something - such as a boy watching loggers or a man working on a bridge - and then he writes in order to figure out who that person is, why they are doing a certain activity, and where it will lead.

He said this is why he always leaves his endings open and not fully tied up. Michael Ondaatje has said that he feels his characters always continue to live after he has completed a novel.

In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje