The Impostor: A Novel [Paperback]

Damon Galgut (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 2009

Damon Galgut is one of South Africa’s most exciting new literary voices. InThe Impostor,his first novel sinceThe Good Doctor,Galgut leads his readers into the developing heart of postapartheid South Africa, a landscape being reshaped by new waves of money and power. Adam Napier leaves Johannesburg looking for a fresh start. Jobless and directionless, but with a head full of literary ambitions, he moves into his brother’s dilapidated house on the edge of a backwater town. One day he encounters Canning, a man who claims Adam saved his life in their school days, but whom Adam does not remember at all. But he plays along and, for a time, enjoys all that Canning has: a vast fortune and game preserve inherited from his father, and a beautiful, mysterious younger wife to whom Adam is compulsively, dangerously drawn. A spellbinding achievement from one of the defining members of a new generation of African writers,The Impostorevokes a glittering world in which the moneyed old guard, newly empowered black Africans, and shady foreign businessmen jockey for a piece of the new South African dream.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this bleak and thrilling novel, the fifth from Booker Prize–nominee Galgut, the author creates an antipastoral, postapartheid noir that centers around Adam Napier, a depressed poet who retreats to a rural South African town to write. Rather than write, Adam drinks and wallows in depression. The story accelerates once he meets Canning, a former schoolmate who regards Adam as a personal hero even though Adam cannot remember him. As it turns out, Canning is a wealthy businessman with a vendetta against his dead father: he plans to transform an idyllic game preserve his father owned into a golf course. While Canning facilitates business between corrupt politicians and shady businessmen, Adam sinks deeper into a moral quagmire and continues to fail as a poet. At the heart of this tightly wound novel is a story of betrayal—within an individual, among friends and neighbors and within a society. With Adam, Galgut has created a transcendent loser, a contemporary cousin to Bellow's magnificent Tommy Wilhelm in Seize the Day. (Jan.)
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From The New Yorker

Set in post-apartheid South Africa, this gripping novel explores the seamier aspects of reconciliation. Adam, adrift after losing his job to a young black candidate, moves to an isolated town to write poetry. Boredom sets in, relieved only by the appearance of an old school acquaintance, Canning, who invites Adam to spend weekends on his nearby game farm. There Adam meets Canning�s wife, Baby, who is both alluring and chillingly aloof, and begins to realize that no one�s motives are as pure as they appear. Galgut gives even seemingly innocuous details sinister overtones: the clicking of peacocks on a roof, the shuffling steps of Canning�s elderly black servants. Beneath a fairly standard thriller plot (affairs, corruption) runs a critique of contemporary South Africa, from the venality of those enriched by a reinvigorated economy to the stale pieties of the white liberal class.
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Product Details

• Paperback: 249 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat; Original edition (January 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802170536
• ISBN-13: 978-0802170538
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,436,525 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A strong choice for personal fiction collections, December 9, 2008

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Impostor (Hardcover)

When one thinks things can't get any worse, they do. "The Impostor" is a story set in modern South Africa, telling of Adam. Losing his job and his home, he tries to start anew in a beat down shack on the edge of town. An old childhood acquaintance soon appears, Canning, who has the exact opposite of Adam's luck. The ensuing story between the two will alter the course of both of their lives forever. "The Impostor" is a thoroughly entertaining story, a strong choice for personal fiction collections.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bleak yet powerful, January 11, 2009

By 

Sheri S. (Miami, Florida) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Impostor (Hardcover)

This book was received through minibookexpo.com

"The Impostor" is the story of Adam Napier, a lost soul who was recently fired and forced to leave his house. He takes residence in a country house that his brother purchased years earlier but has since been vacant. He seeks to reconnect with his inner poet, and spends much of his time alone in the quiet community in a rural part of South Africa. After a chance encounter with a childhood acquaintance named Canning, Adam's quiet existence begins to take on new meaning. It does not take long however, for Adam's involvement with Canning and his wife Baby, to become complicated and dangerous.

It comes as no surprise to me that Damon Galgut has received much recognition and praise for his writing, as his words and imagery were incredibly powerful throughout the novel. I felt Adam's intense loneliness, as if it were a tangible presence, with the turn of every page. That is exactly why I have contradictory feelings about this book. On the one hand, Galgut's writing transported me into the novel and I couldn't help but read on to see how he would continue to convey such raw emotion. And yet, it is those same beautiful that left me with a gloomy feeling that was hard to shake.

It's not that I only like books with happy endings or light material, but the bleakness of this book was striking. In that respect, saying that I enjoyed reading the book would be incorrect. Rather, I was in awe of the beauty of the writing and just how much I internalized Adam's conflicts. I recommend this book because it is wonderfully written, even though the writing itself evokes some difficult emotions.

http://bookopolis.blogspot.com

4.0 out of 5 stars evocative, slowly, August 9, 2011

By 

begonia (Moscow, Russia) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Impostor: A Novel (Paperback)

This book is effective in evoking the slow-moving, hot landscape of the karoo, and pushes various ideas regarding alienation and human interaction that seem to be recurrent themes in modern South African literature. It had some things in common with Coetzee's writing: a passivity that many readers might consider boring. However, I found it very engaging almost despite myself, and read it over the course of a day. Those who can tolerate Gabriel Garcia Marquez might find this an interesting window onto a very unfamiliar landscape.