The Good Doctor

WINNER OF THE COMMONWEALTH WRITERS' PRIZE & Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize



A powerful, taut and intense tale of a friendship overshadowed by betrayal, set against the tawdry hopes and disappointments of a post-apartheid South Africa.



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.



Damon Galgut was born in Pretoria in 1963. He wrote his first novel, A Sinless Season, when he was seventeen. His other books include Small Circle of Beings, The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs, The Quarry, The Good Doctor, The Impostor and In A Strange Room. The Good Doctor was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Dublin/IMPAC Award, The Impostor was also shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and In a Strange Room was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 2021 The Promise won the Booker Prize. He lives in Cape Town.



'The bold, fresh voice of South African fiction'



'A latter day Heart of Darkness'



'His sentences have such hypnotic power that once started, this novel is very hard to put down'



'A lovely, lethal, disturbing novel'



'A gripping read, laced throughout with powerful emotional truth and Damon Galgut's extraordinary vision'



'As good as Graham Greene'



'Should have won the Booker.'