The Good Doctor

In this gorgeously written, compellingly eerie new novel, Damon Galut offers a visceral portrait of South Africa at the crossroads of change. Young, idealistic Dr. Laurence Waters arrives at his new post in a rural hospital in South Africa only to find a dusty postcard of the past. He requested the assignment with hopes that he might make a difference in the desolate outpost, but the hospital is running on fumes: Any serious ailment is exported to larger city facilities, there is barely enough funding for staff, and the facility is too far off the beaten path to be affected by change. Laurence shares a room with the head doctor, Frank Eloff, a burned-out, disaffected hulk of a man who is both resentful of his young roommate's optimism and moved by his awkward charm. Laurence determinedly forms a friendship with his elder colleague, against all of Frank's natural instincts. But Laurence's eager desire to affect change and his firm belief in his moral duty as a doctor are at direct odds with the changing regime and the violence that prevails outside the hospital; and although Frank is temporarily buoyed by his young charge's enthusiasm, the hopes of both men come crashing down, as the harsh reality of their surroundings quashes their falsely idyllic dreams. Inviting comparisons to the work of Graham Greene and J. M. Coetzee, Galut's novel vividly captures the voice of a stranger in a strange land -- an outsider fleeing his own life who struggles to understand his adopted cultural surroundings and, in so doing, succeeds only in wreaking disaster.