Africa. Summer. A murder, a fire, a circus. Dark and brooding. Slim, concise. Lots of solitude and alone-ness, some chosen, some not. Identities stolen, crimes misattributed, things concealed, things admitted. Some longer chapters broken up by many short and choppy others. Lots of dust and heat and listlessness.

Sometimes confusing pronoun usage (purposely I think). Often left to the reader’s interpretation which he “he” is. At one point, something happened to a “he” that, I thought, had to be one of three certain “he” people. Yet if I interpreted later chapters correctly, it couldn’t have been any of those three it happened to. So to whom? (And at one point, the book said “Ho” when I’m pretty sure it meant “He”. Otherwise, one of the “he” characters was named “Ho” but, if you ignore that, we don’t ever find out that particular dude’s name (we do know the others) and pretty sure we’re not meant to so I think it must have been a misprint.)

Had read a previous Galgut “The Good Doctor” from the Booker short list a few years back and if you search this page for “Galgut” you can see my brief comments.