The Good Doctor - Softcover

Damon Galgut

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1843542013 ISBN 13: 9781843542018

Publisher: Atlantic Books, 2003

Synopsis

When Laurence Waters arrives at his rural hospital posting, Frank is instantly suspicious. Laurence is everything Frank is not - young, optimistic and full of new schemes. The two become uneasy friends, while the rest of the staff in the deserted hospital view Laurence with a mixture of awe and mistrust. The town beyond the hospital is also coping with new arrivals, and the return of old faces. The brigadier - a self-fashioned dictator from apartheid days - is rumoured still to be alive. And down at Mama's place, a group of soldiers have moved in with their malign commandant, a man Frank has met before and is keen to avoid. Laurence wants to help - but in a world where the past is demanding restitution from the present, his ill-starred idealism cannot last. In gleaming prose Damon Galgut has created a literary thriller out of an unlikely friendship. The Good Doctor is a gripping novelistic high-wire act.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"Galgut's prose, its gentle rhythms and straightforward sentences edging toward revelation, is utterly seductive and suspenseful.... Galgut is a master of psychological tension.... Tragic and brilliant...."
Globe and Mail

"Damon Galgut has written a lovely, lethal, disturbing novel."
- The Guardian (U.K.)

"Exquisite.... It is a testament to Galgut's skill that this mostly quiet novel can leave such a lasting sense of urgency. And shame. That, after all, is what great fiction is meant to do."
- Denver Post

"Possesses the economy and pace of Hemingway and the lyrical grace of Graham Greene...."
- Booklist

"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."
- André 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


From the Hardcover edition.

From the Inside Flap

When Laurence Waters arrives at his rural hospital posting in a former homeland of the new South Africa, Frank, a fellow doctor there, is instantly suspicious. Laurence is everything Frank is not - young, optimistic, and full of new schemes. The two become uneasy friends, while the rest of the meagre staff in the deserted hospital view Laurence with a mixture of awe and mistrust.
The tired, ghostly town beyond the hospital is also coping with new arrivals, and the return of old faces. The Brigadier, a self-fashioned dictator from apartheid days, is rumoured to be still alive. And down at Mama's Place, the town's only watering hole, a group of soldiers have moved in with their malign commandant, a man Frank has met before and is keen to avoid for his own dark reasons. Laurence wants to help - but in a world where the past is demanding restitution from the present, his ill-starred idealism cannot last.

Edition details

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1843542013
• ISBN 13: 9781843542018
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240