The Good Doctor: A Novel [Paperback]

Damon Galgut (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 7, 2004

A finalist for the Man Booker Prize and Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the region of Africa, The Good Doctor is a taut, intense tale of the dashed hopes of the post apartheid era and the small betrayals that doom a friendship. It has been greeted with enthusiastic interest around the world and assures Damon Galgut's place as a major international talent. When Laurence Waters arrives at his new post at a deserted rural hospital, staff physician Frank Eloff is instantly suspicious. Laurence is everything Frank is not—young, optimistic, and full of big ideas. The whole town is beset with new arrivals and the return of old faces. Frank reestablishes a liaison with a woman, one that will have unexpected consequences. A self-made dictator from apartheid days is rumored to be active in cross-border smuggling, and a group of soldiers has moved in to track him, led by a man from Frank's own dark past. Laurence sees only possibilities—but in a world where the past is demanding restitution from the present, his ill-starred idealism cannot last.

Editorial Reviews

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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

Like most elements of this slim, absorbing novel set in post-apartheid South Africa, the title is ambiguous. The narrator, Frank, is a doctor, but, to judge from our first impression, not a good one. After the collapse of his marriage, he has retreated to a hospital in a rural backwater. His uneventful existence is disturbed by the arrival of Laurence, a young doctor eager to help the poor black inhabitants of the surrounding villages. The two men develop an uneasy friendship; Frank is both repelled and fascinated by this younger version of himself. The novel shrewdly introduces thriller-like devices—a secret mistress, a male nurse with underworld ties—that put the two doctors to the test. In spare, declarative prose, Galgut spins a brisk and bracing story, but he's also in pursuit of something murkier: the double-edged nature of doing good in a land where "the past has only just happened."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (September 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802141692
• ISBN-13: 978-0802141699
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #169,308 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #44 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > African

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent : should have snazzed last year's Booker, September 6, 2004

By 

Reader from Singapore - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Good Doctor (Paperback)

Damon Galgut's "The Good Doctor (GD)" is arguably the best among last year's Booker nominees, though sadly its classy but staid and measured qualities may not be what critics look for in prize winners. With GD, those acquainted with the works of South African novelists like Nadine Gordimer and J M Coetzee will find themselves in familiar territory. South Africa in transition is a perspective commonly adopted by these writers.

At its highest level, the brooding tension between Frank and Laurence in their unlikely relationship is symbolic of the struggle for supremacy between the forces of old and new. When Laurence's wide-eyed enthusiasm is pitted against Frank's resigned and cynical indifference, the result is cataclysmic, far beyond the reader's imagination. While Galgut's story is touched by death and regret, his vision isn't entirely bleak. When Laurence and Frank swap beds, deadbeat after a long night out, they feel strangely comfortable in each other's beds. Like yin and yang, are they not twin halves of a pupa society emerging from its chrysalis ? Laurence's stubborn perseverance against the stultifying bureaucracy of Dr Ngema's hospital isn't always altruistic. His callous disregard for Frank's plight as he goes in frenzied pursuit of his vision of setting up a village clinic is delirious if not a little mad. In spite of this, it is Laurence who unleashes the momentum that forces Frank to examine what's wrong in his thwarted life - his failed relationships with his father, his ex-wife, Maria, etc, and who is ultimately the catalyst for Frank's transformation.

There are scenes in GD that are truly memorable, like Frank's and Zanele's unexpected nocturnal encounter with the shadowy figure of the Brigadier, the town's former tinpot dictator. Surely Zanele's schoolgirl-like enchantment with her host is Galgut's sideswipe at the veneer thin and uncomprehending sloganeering of armed chaired liberals from afar. Galgut's characterisation is excellent, sharp and realised throughout. The sullenness of Tehogo, the hospital's sole unqualified male nurse, perfectly encapsulates the corruption, rot and decay of South African society. Only the rehearsed platitudes flowing from the mouth of Dr Ngema comes across as false, stagy and predictable. You know what she will say even before she says it. A minor lapse in otherwise great characterisation.

Galgut's poised, unhurried and reasoned prose is an absolute delight. Its greatest strength lies in its ability to reveal many layered truths of a society at its crossroads without hyperbole or false bravura. A thoroughly confident and assured debut from Galgut, who will no doubt join the ranks of great South African novelists.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Youthful Optimism vs Middle Aged Cynicism, January 20, 2004

By 

Eric Anderson (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Good Doctor (Paperback)

Galgut's novel evokes the stark landscape of rural post-apartheid South Africa. But do not let the daunting subject matter scare you away. This is a highly accessible novel written in simple, but eloquent prose. It's told from the point of view of middle-aged Frank Eloff who is an under-achieving doctor that has spent many years of his life at a remote hospital waiting to be promoted. He begins the tale when an enthusiastic young doctor named Laurence joins the hospital as part of a required year of training. The two are required to share a room. A uncomfortable friendship blossoms. Laurence is determined to use his time at the hospital to make some radical changes as part of the new South Africa he welcomes. Frank however isn't so certain that the old South Africa has entirely left. Through the novel they are confronted by unavoidable people and problems from the past which slow the progress Laurence so ardently desires.

It's a literary work that contemplates the dilemma of the new South Africa with the same brevity as Gordimer's None to Accompany Me and Coetzee's Disgrace. Apart from the political connotations, this novel is a powerful and haunting tale about friendship and a man coming to terms with his middle age. It echoes the disturbing quality of Ibsen's Ghosts through its repetition of sexual betrayal. Toward the end of Frank's narrative, his accounts become more hallucinatory and his honesty becomes uncertain. A tremendous guilt overshadows his narrative. There is a desire to shake the complacency of the environment, yet any attempt at progress instantly proves futile. This is a very melancholy novel, but one of captivating beauty and intriguing mystery.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well-paced reworking of a very old story, February 19, 2004

By 

Erin Tigchelaar (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Good Doctor (Paperback)

"The Good Doctor" is a quick read - and not just because the prose is clear, spare and well-balanced. You've read this story before. The plot of the disastrous end to a friendship between a middle-aged, sexually-corrupt cynic and a young, meddling idealist is already well-worn ground. Among others, it has been covered by Graham Greene in "The Quiet American" - a book that has received much attention lately due to the movie adaptation with Michael Caine. I am very surprised that no-one has noticed the connection between "The Good Doctor" and "The Quiet American", especially given the similarity in titles, let alone plot and character development. The former, like the later, is filled with beautiful, careful sentences, a confessional tone, an almost surreally ominous setting, and well-paced suspense. Greene's book, however, told us unique and prescient things about Vietnam. Somehow, despite being immediately engaged by the story, I could not convince myself that Galgut was saying anything new or particularly insightful about post-apartheid South Africa. Though I enjoyed his book in a way I have never enjoyed "The Quiet American", I think reading "The Good Doctor" has helped me to develop a greater appreciation for the importance of Greene's novel. Is it the most cynical part of me that believes Galgut is a great writer who, like many of his countrymen and women, is simply trying too hard to write the Great New South African Novel?