The Good Doctor - by Damon Galgut (Paperback)

About the Book

A taut, intense tale of the dashed hopes of the post-apartheid era and the small betrayals that doom a friendship, "The Good Doctor" is an extraordinary parable of the corruption of the flesh and spirit. 224 pp

Book Synopsis

A finalist for the Man Booker Prize and Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the region of Africa, The Good Doctor is a taut, intense tale of the dashed hopes of the post apartheid era and the small betrayals that doom a friendship. It has been greeted with enthusiastic interest around the world and assures Damon Galgut's place as a major international talent. When Laurence Waters arrives at his new post at a deserted rural hospital, staff physician Frank Eloff is instantly suspicious. Laurence is everything Frank is not--young, optimistic, and full of big ideas. The whole town is beset with new arrivals and the return of old faces. Frank reestablishes a liaison with a woman, one that will have unexpected consequences. A self-made dictator from apartheid days is rumored to be active in cross-border smuggling, and a group of soldiers has moved in to track him, led by a man from Frank's own dark past. Laurence sees only possibilities--but in a world where the past is demanding restitution from the present, his ill-starred idealism cannot last.

Review Quotes

"A truly remarkable novel, steeped in contemporary history, yet at the same time transcending it. I was enthralled by its intensity and the immediacy of every small twist and turn of the story."
-Andre Brink
"A tremendous brave book. The author never flinches, and makes his hero's dark logic compelling and hair-rising. . . . Galgut writes like a man on a long fast night drive through bad places.... It's brilliant."
-Dermot Healy
"From the first page the reader is gripped by a rare twinning of convictions: that it is strange and new, and that the imaginative rendering is of the highest quality.... There are traces of J. M. Coetzee and Graham Greene but Damon Galgut is a true original."
-Geoff Dyer
"If there is a posterity, "The Good Doctor will be seen as one of the great literary triumphs of South Africa's transition, a novel that is in every way the equal of J.M. Coetzee's "Disgrace.... [Galgut is] a novelist of great and growing power."
-Rian Malan