The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut

• Hoofdstedelijke Openbare Bibliotheek Brussels, Belgium
• Mestska Knihovna v Praze / Municipal Library of Prague, Czech Republic
  

When Laurence Waters arrives at his new post at a deserted rural hospital, staff physician Frank Eloff is instantly suspicious. Laurence is young, optimistic, and full of big ideas-everything Frank, hardened and embittered by years of irrelevancy and disappointment in the "bush," is not. The two become uneasy friends, while the rest of the staff in the dilapidated hospital view Laurence with a mixture of awe and distrust

The town beyond the hospital is also coping with new arrivals and the return of old faces. The Brigadier, a self-styled dictator from apartheid days, is rumoured to be still 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. When the final denouement comes, who will make the cynical choice, and who the moral one?

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 and The Quarry. He lives in Cape Town, South Africa.