The good doctor

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