From Publishers Weekly
Shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker prize, Galgut's fifth novel, his first to be published in the U.S., explores postapartheid South Africa's ambiguous present, where deep-rooted social and political tensions threaten any shared dream for the future. Resigned to self-exile at an inadequate hospital in a desolate former "homeland," the disillusioned Dr. Frank Eloff befriends a new volunteer: fresh-faced Dr. Laurence Waters. Determined to revivify the rural hospital and more broadly, South Africa which has slipped into humdrum dysfunction, Laurence tests Frank's stifled sensibilities and challenges hospital director Dr. Ngema, who frequently quips that she is all for "change and innovation," even though she cannot abide confrontation with her own modest authority. The young doctor's idealism eventually collides with the old power structure, the "ex-tinpot dictator of the ex-homeland" called the Brigadier and his lawless band. Neither Laurence nor Frank wholly grasps the culture and poverty of the place in which they live and are supposed to serve; they remain strangers in their own country, "traveling in a different landscape" than the black South Africans. Frank grapples with his former passivity in the face of racism and torture in the military, while Laurence pulls recklessly toward a fantastic dream of utopia, and the two doctors are "twined together in a tension that unites." But "a rope doesn't know what its own purpose is," and South Africa seems ever capable of sliding back into the mistrust and political strife of the past. Like Graham Greene's work, this quiet, affecting novel will attract those haunted by the shadow of colonialism.
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From Booklist
"The first time I saw him I thought,
he won't last," says former soldier and physician Frank Eloff, recalling his initial meeting with idealistic colleague Laurence Waters. This is the beginning of a precarious friendship between the two doctors at a rural desert hospital in postapartheid South Africa. Told from the perspective of the disillusioned Eloff, Galgut's fifth novel (but the first to be published in the U.S.) possesses the economy and pace of Hemingway and the lyrical grace of Graham Greene. A native of Pretoria, Galgut embraces the themes of allegiance, betrayal, deception, and self-deception in a world where the past is demanding restitution from the present. Eloff and Waters are polar opposites, and by uniting them, the author renders a quietly compelling examination of the chasms that exist in the new South Africa and the moral challenges that lie in apartheid's wake. This moody and memorable parable of the corruption of the flesh and spirit was shortlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize.
Allison BlockCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
by Peter Barry
by Damon Galgut
by Andrew Davidson
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