The Physician of Sanlúcar - Softcover

The Physician of Sanlúcar is Jonathan Falla’s fourth novel, after Blue Poppies, Poor Mercy and Glenfarron. Jamaican-born Falla lives in Scotland where he is director of studies for the St Andrews Creative Writing Summer School. He has won a Creative Scotland Award, a PEN story prize, and other awards for his fiction, drama and film writing. See www.jonathanfalla.co.uk.

"A runaway doctor, his married mistress, her gay-leaning husband, noble tribes-people: these, plus the craggy, rubble-strewn Patagonian wilderness, and a villain of Scottish extraction, are the characters. We begin on the cusp of the First World War. Matthieu Macanan, a young French physician in the backstreets of Punta Arenas, tending the woes of native Indians, raddled farmers, and the sex-starved sailors, is summoned to Tierra del Fuego to treat sick natives. There he encounters the sheepman, Lovell, who goads him concerning his allegedly premature flight from university, and questions his right to practise. The arrival of Austrians, the Kahns, breaks the novel's stasis, and the cloistered, secretive doctor is soon prised open by Mrs Kahn, who, with her husband, plans to link Patagonia s communities. Their biplane, the fragile Dove, is a daring, almost incongruous symbol of their hopes. (The novel) is carried out with poetic subtlety,...so joyously accomplished, light, almost airborne. And witty too, with a wry, anachronistic treat for fans of the movie, Casablanca, dropped like a feather to tickle the fancy. A smirk in the slipstream. Go, discover!" - Tom Adair in The Scotsman

"A runaway doctor, his married mistress, her gay-leaning husband, noble tribes-people: these, plus the craggy, rubble-strewn Patagonian wilderness, and a villain of Scottish extraction, are the characters. We begin on the cusp of the First World War. Matthieu Macanan, a young French physician in the backstreets of Punta Arenas, tending the woes of native Indians, raddled farmers, and the sex-starved sailors, is summoned to Tierra del Fuego to treat sick natives. There he encounters the sheepman, Lovell, who goads him concerning his allegedly premature flight from university, and questions his right to practise. The arrival of Austrians, the Kahns, breaks the novel's stasis, and the cloistered, secretive doctor is soon prised open by Mrs Kahn, who, with her husband, plans to link Patagonia s communities. Their biplane, the fragile Dove, is a daring, almost incongruous symbol of their hopes. (The novel) is carried out with poetic subtlety,...so joyously accomplished, light, almost airborne. And witty too, with a wry, anachronistic treat for fans of the movie, Casablanca, dropped like a feather to tickle the fancy. A smirk in the slipstream. Go, discover!" - Tom Adair in The Scotsman