The Physician of Sanlúcar - Softcover

Falla, Jonathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1906582386 ISBN 13: 9781906582388

Publisher: Aurora Metro Press, 2013

Synopsis

An intense, graphic and quietly violent psychological novel set in Patagonia circa 1915. This latest novel from multi-award-winning author Jonathan Falla brings to mind the fiction of Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene.

A beautifully written and absorbing story of exile and redemption set against the stark Patagonian wilderness at the start of the modern age. Matthieu Macanan has fled his home in France, to work as a doctor in a remote region of South America where his past is unknown. There he tends to the local tribes and tries to avoid contact with European settlers. When Silke Kahn and her husband Theo into his world with plans to run an airmail service in the area, his reclusive life is irrevocably altered.

While Matthieu struggles to resist his attraction to Silke, hostilities created by the coming war escalate, drawing the local people onto their orbit and forcing the doctor to decide which side he is on. But what is he hiding from? Can he really help the local tribes to survive the disease and trouble the Europeans unleash? In offering refuge to Silke Kahn, has Matthieu finally committed a fatal move?

About this title

About the Author

The Physician of Sanlúcar is Jonathan Falla’s fourth novel, after Blue Poppies, Poor Mercy and Glenfarron. Jamaican-born Falla lives in Scotland where he is director of studies for the St Andrews Creative Writing Summer School. He has won a Creative Scotland Award, a PEN story prize, and other awards for his fiction, drama and film writing. See www.jonathanfalla.co.uk.

Review

"A runaway doctor, his married mistress, her gay-leaning husband, noble tribes-people: these, plus the craggy, rubble-strewn Patagonian wilderness, and a villain of Scottish extraction, are the characters. We begin on the cusp of the First World War. Matthieu Macanan, a young French physician in the backstreets of Punta Arenas, tending the woes of native Indians, raddled farmers, and the sex-starved sailors, is summoned to Tierra del Fuego to treat sick natives. There he encounters the sheepman, Lovell, who goads him concerning his allegedly premature flight from university, and questions his right to practise. The arrival of Austrians, the Kahns, breaks the novel's stasis, and the cloistered, secretive doctor is soon prised open by Mrs Kahn, who, with her husband, plans to link Patagonia s communities. Their biplane, the fragile Dove, is a daring, almost incongruous symbol of their hopes. (The novel) is carried out with poetic subtlety,...so joyously accomplished, light, almost airborne. And witty too, with a wry, anachronistic treat for fans of the movie, Casablanca, dropped like a feather to tickle the fancy. A smirk in the slipstream. Go, discover!" - Tom Adair in The Scotsman

"A runaway doctor, his married mistress, her gay-leaning husband, noble tribes-people: these, plus the craggy, rubble-strewn Patagonian wilderness, and a villain of Scottish extraction, are the characters. We begin on the cusp of the First World War. Matthieu Macanan, a young French physician in the backstreets of Punta Arenas, tending the woes of native Indians, raddled farmers, and the sex-starved sailors, is summoned to Tierra del Fuego to treat sick natives. There he encounters the sheepman, Lovell, who goads him concerning his allegedly premature flight from university, and questions his right to practise. The arrival of Austrians, the Kahns, breaks the novel's stasis, and the cloistered, secretive doctor is soon prised open by Mrs Kahn, who, with her husband, plans to link Patagonia s communities. Their biplane, the fragile Dove, is a daring, almost incongruous symbol of their hopes. (The novel) is carried out with poetic subtlety,...so joyously accomplished, light, almost airborne. And witty too, with a wry, anachronistic treat for fans of the movie, Casablanca, dropped like a feather to tickle the fancy. A smirk in the slipstream. Go, discover!" - Tom Adair in The Scotsman

About this edition

• Publisher: Aurora Metro Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1906582386
• ISBN 13: 9781906582388
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 252