The Impostor, By Damon Galgut

Reviewed,Emma Hagestadt
Friday 22 May 2009 00:00 BST
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Best known for his Man Booker shortlisted The Good Doctor, Galgut's long awaited sixth novel opens on a thrillerish note. Adam Napier is on his uppers, having recently lost both his job and his home.

Moving out of Johannesburg, he sets up home in a run-down house on the edges of the veldt. The atmosphere is eerie, and things get more unsettling still when he's accosted by Canning, a man who claims to know him from school.

Against his better judgement, Adam finds himself entangled in a dodgy buisness deal, and also sleeping with Canning's wife, an ex-hooker called Baby.

There's a self-consciouness about Galgut's more populist flourishes, but this doesn't detract from the pleasures of this moody and melancholy thriller.

This is a book that exposes the many new faces of post-apartheid South Africa, and the desire to get rich quick.

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