The Physician of Sanlucar — Jonathan Falla

An intense, graphic and quietly violent psychological novel set in Patagonia circa 1915. This latest novel from multi-award-winning author Jonathan Falla brings to mind the fiction of Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene.

A beautifully written and absorbing story of exile and redemption set against the stark Patagonian wilderness at the start of the modern age. Matthieu Macanan has fled his home in France, to work as a doctor in a remote region of South America where his past is unknown. There he tends to the local tribes and tries to avoid contact with European settlers. When Silke Kahn and her husband Theo into his world with plans to run an airmail service in the area, his reclusive life is irrevocably altered.

While Matthieu struggles to resist his attraction to Silke, hostilities created by the coming war escalate, drawing the local people onto their orbit and forcing the doctor to decide which side he is on. But what is he hiding from? Can he really help the local tribes to survive the disease and trouble the Europeans unleash? In offering refuge to Silke Kahn, has Matthieu finally committed a fatal move?