Desolate South Africa By Damon Galgut A Book A Day ANSA

DAMON GALGUT, ''THE GOOD DOCTOR'' (E/O, pp 250 - 18.

00 euro - Translation by Valeria Raimondi) - At the center of the beautiful novels by Damon Galgut, winner of the Booker Prize two years ago with ''The promise'' (also published by E/O) there is the complex, often disconcerting reality of South Africa, which after the season and the hopes born with Nelson Mandela, is experiencing its post aparthaid life in a difficult way, because what was it rubs off and has left structural marks that will take a long time to overcome An almost indefinite South Africa, which could be many other places in recent history, where ''the past has just happened.

It hasn't passed yet'' The existence, destiny and individual choices of the protagonists of this novel, which is dated 2003, with their often conflicting characters and feelings, they act as a litmus test to understand what world they live in, what society they have around them, how multifaceted, divided between the center and the suburbs of the former homelands (underdeveloped areas left to the self-determination of black populations).

It is there that figures like that of the former dictator of the place, the General, seem ghosts of the past and instead then reveal the weight of their presence and that of poor Maria show a desire for freedom that is difficult and dangerous to live, being still prisoners of past realities For Galgut, the skin color of his characters is not the real problem, so much so that it is hard and it takes some time to figure out what each one is.

However, the protagonist is Dr Frank Eloff who, after separating from Karen, he has chosen to work in a hospital lost in nowhere, a primary care hospital which, deprived as it is of personnel and essentials, is then forced to send patients to another more important hospital.

He lives his simple, elementary life serenely in the eternal expectation of becoming director of that place, since Ngema, the current director, says she is about to be promoted and transferred elsewhere, so she juggles between her proclamations of ''being in favor of change and innovation'' and trying to ensure that nothing changes and can create problems The fact is that even in that remote corner of the bushveld, the plateau on the border with Zimbabwe and Botswana, something happens and the doctor will be forced to come to terms with himself and his life choices.

And the narration, thanks to the strength and style of Galgut's story, it becomes a sort of adventure novel, between individual psychologies, occasional encounters, disturbing and mysterious aspects all to be investigated, from knowing if the General is still alive, to discovering why Maria, who becomes Dr Eloff's lover, but lives in fear and accepts after a while to be paid like a prostitute, of who a certain white car is, until she understands who those soldiers are who have arrived to bring everything back under the control of the central power and above all who their leader is, who seems to be Colonel Molle.

That unscrupulous Moller who, when young Eloff was forced into military service, involved him in a horrendous story of violence and torture which he was then unable to rebel against and which he had managed to bury in the depths of his heart Then there's the young doctor recently graduated Laurence Waters, who chose to start from that hospital to prove himself where the commitment is harder and there is more to do to help people.

Optimistic and full of good will, he is the opposite of Eloff who, even though he tries to involve him in his plans to open clinics in the most remote villages, also to let people know that there is a hospital they can go to, and at the same time accuses him of not doing part of his country: the one which, ''by starting over, we are rebuilding from the ground up'' Of course, all of this is the structure of the story, fascinating and alive with a thousand details, which finds its truth in everyday life, in the weaknesses, ingenuity, ways of being of the various characters, including minor ones, such as the guardian Theogo, promoted to hospital nurse.

Illusions, dreams, the need to be accepted, the desire for rebellion, which involve the characters and the reader with them despite the underlying bitterness that leaves little room for hope (HANDLE).

.