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.

Accolades

Shortlisted for Booker Prize for Fiction 2003.
Shortlisted for Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2003.

Author Biography

Damon Galgut was born in Pretoria in 1963. He wrote his first novel, A Sinless Season, when he was seventeen. His other books include A Small Circle of Beings, The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs and The Quarry. He lives in Cape Town.