The Impostor - by Damon Galgut (Paperback)

About the Book

Damon Galgut is one of South Africa's most exciting new literary voices. In "The Impostor, "his first novel since "The Good Doctor, "Galgut leads his readers into the developing heart of postapartheid South Africa, a landscape being reshaped by new waves of money and power. Adam Napier leaves Johannesburg looking for a fresh start. Jobless and directionless, but with a head full of literary ambitions, he moves into his brother's dilapidated house on the edge of a backwater town. One day he encounters Canning, a man who claims Adam saved his life in their school days, but whom Adam does not remember at all. But he plays along and, for a time, enjoys all that Canning has: a vast fortune and game preserve inherited from his father, and a beautiful, mysterious younger wife to whom Adam is compulsively, dangerously drawn. A spellbinding achievement from one of the defining members of a new generation of African writers, "The Impostor "evokes a glittering world in which the moneyed old guard, newly empowered black Africans, and shady foreign businessmen jockey for a piece of the new South African dream.

Book Synopsis

Damon Galgut is one of South Africa's most exciting new literary voices. In The Impostor, his first novel since The Good Doctor, Galgut leads his readers into the developing heart of postapartheid South Africa, a landscape being reshaped by new waves of money and power. Adam Napier leaves Johannesburg looking for a fresh start. Jobless and directionless, but with a head full of literary ambitions, he moves into his brother's dilapidated house on the edge of a backwater town. One day he encounters Canning, a man who claims Adam saved his life in their school days, but whom Adam does not remember at all. But he plays along and, for a time, enjoys all that Canning has: a vast fortune and game preserve inherited from his father, and a beautiful, mysterious younger wife to whom Adam is compulsively, dangerously drawn. A spellbinding achievement from one of the defining members of a new generation of African writers, The Impostor evokes a glittering world in which the moneyed old guard, newly empowered black Africans, and shady foreign businessmen jockey for a piece of the new South African dream.

Review Quotes

"[A] gripping tale of secrecy and obsession set in the African savannah." -- Melissa Katsoulis

"Fast-paced and breathless . . . Canning is a memorable creation, a sort of African Gatsby, but without the glamour." -- William Skidelsky

"Outstanding . . . a major writer worthy to be referred to as a kindred spirit of the great Coetzee."

"Spare, hypnotic prose . . . [a] Dostoyevskian narrative about individual moral choices." -- Rachel Hoer

About the Author

Damon Galgut is a South African born in Pretoria in 1963. He wrote his first novel, A Sinless Season, when he was seventeen. His novel The Quarry was made into a film, which he himself co-scripted and which was released theatrically in 1998. His novels In a Strange Room and The Good Doctor were shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2003 and 2010, and his novel The Promise won the Booker Prize in 2021. His other books include Small Circle of Beings and The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs, and he is also the author of the plays Echoes of Anger, Party for Mother, Alive and Kicking, and The Green's Keeper.