SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2010 MAN BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2010 ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE ONDAATJE PRIZE A young man takes three journeys, through Greece, India and Africa. He travels lightly, simply. To those who travel with him and those whom he meets on the way - including a handsome, enigmatic stranger, a group of careless backpackers and a woman on the edge - he is the Follower, the Lover and the Guardian. Yet, despite the man's best intentions, each journey ends in disaster. Together, these three journeys will ...
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SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2010 MAN BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2010 ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE ONDAATJE PRIZE A young man takes three journeys, through Greece, India and Africa. He travels lightly, simply. To those who travel with him and those whom he meets on the way - including a handsome, enigmatic stranger, a group of careless backpackers and a woman on the edge - he is the Follower, the Lover and the Guardian. Yet, despite the man's best intentions, each journey ends in disaster. Together, these three journeys will change his whole life. A novel of longing and thwarted desire, rage and compassion, In a Strange Room is the hauntingly beautiful evocation of one man's search for love, and a place to call home.
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This book (actually a linked trio of novellas) was published in Paris REview and shortliste4d for the Man Booker Prize. Not surprising. The narrator veers between first person and third person--it's confusing, but isn't that something great literature does? Well, no. And the lead character is just travelling, purposelessly, with no good reason to go anywhere. You hate him after a while. Doesn't that sound like it really should have been given the Man Booker Award? The lesser characters are also uninteresting unmotivated people--hey, this really should have won some kind of prize! Galgut's more recent novel, Arctic Summer, actually is a very fine piece of writing, on the contrary!
