How long does it take to read The Good Doctor?
Damon Galgut
The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut takes about 4 hours 2 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 2 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2003. 220 pages, about 60,500 words.
9 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 6 hours 43 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 2 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 31 minutes |
The page count is the median across 6 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
A taut, intense tale of the dashed hopes of the post-apartheid era and the small betrayals that doom a friendship, The Good Doctor is an extraordinary parable of the corruption of the flesh and spirit. It assures Damon Galgut's place as a major international talent. When Laurence Waters arrives at his new post at a deserted rural hospital, staff physician Frank Eloff is instantly suspicious. Laurence is everything Frank is not - young, optimistic, and full of big ideas. The whole town is beset with new arrivals and the return of old faces. Frank reestablishes a liaison with a woman, one which will have unexpected consequences. A self-made dictator from apartheid days is rumored to be active in cross-border smuggling and a group of soldiers has moved in to track him, led by a man from Frank's own dark past. Laurence sees only possibilities - but in a world where the past is demanding restitution from the present, his ill-starred idealism cannot last.
Subjects: Physicians, Smuggling, Betrayal, Fiction, Medical fiction, South African (English), Rural hospitals
