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"A man is known by the books he reads"
The Good Doctor
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The Good Doctor
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10 journalers for this copy...
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A wonderful surprise in my mailbox today, received from Shylock in North Yorkshire, England. Thank you so much -- I'm so looking forward to reading this one!
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The Good Doctor is set in the late 1990s in a small, dilapitated hospital in an unnamed former black homeland* in South Africa. As the book begins, Frank Eloff -- a doctor who has been putting in time at the hospital for seven years -- meets Laurence Waters, a young physician dispatched to the facility to complete a mandatory one year of community medical service. There's only one catch: the hospital is all but shut down, with no more than 1 - 2 patients at any given time, the remaining staff reduced to just those left by attrition. Eloff and Waters work with Dr. Ngome, an African woman physician, and Drs. Jorge and Claudia Santander, Cuban physicians abroad working in support of the "new" South Africa. Shylock is right (see above) -- none of these characters are particularly appealing as human beings, and nothing about their situation inspires much sympathy or respect. In a way, that's what this book is about -- a cast of characters where the lines between "good guys" and "bad guys" are completely blurred, living in an atmosphere so rife with violence, poverty and corruption that everyone has more or less given up. The Good Doctor succeeded for me, as a novel about the challenge -- or maybe the futility -- of decolonization, and the difficulty of changing old habits of mind, politics and culture. I think it would be a good read for anyone with an interest in contemporary South Africa, or for anyone interested in tracking Booker Prize shortlisted books (this one was on the 2003 shortlist). * During the apartheid era, there were ten self-governing homelands -- territories set aside for different black ethnic groups, four of which were granted "independence" (which was recognized only by South Africa and each other). The former homelands ceased to exist in April 1994, and were re-incorporated into South Africa and absorbed into the nine new provinces (see map at top left). |
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Released 7 yrs ago (10/11/2004 UTC) at Posted at Nerja Post Office in Nerja, Andalucia, Spain, A Bookring -- Controlled Releases WILD RELEASE NOTES:
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Released 6 yrs ago (10/6/2005 UTC) at sent to bookcrosser in Mailed, Bookring -- Controlled Releases WILD RELEASE NOTES:
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