The Transplant Men

Jane Taylor's richly imagined tale is of two men; Hawthorne, an organ recipient, and Barnard, the first person to perform a heart transplant. The novel opens with a mystery: an unexplained violent death and a video tape left with the body. Your achievement is all the greater for being accomplished from Cape Town, I said in response to his complaint that the world was catching up. It will signal that our country is thriving. In those days I did not align myself with the nay-sayers who were making so much fuss in the aftermath of the Terrorism Act. You are our sputnik. I spoke in a florid set of comparisons, as I often do when seized by an enthusiasm. I wasn't exaggerating. Our Yuri Gagarin. These words are spoken to Christiaan Barnard by Guy Hawthorne, the narrator of this gripping piece of storytelling, an investigation within an investigation. Infused with the halfway modern spirit of South Africa in the 1960's, this poetic and haunting thriller captures the tensions of the times, the story of medicine and psychological twists that lie at the heart of celebrity and obsession.

Softcover. English. Jacana. 2009. 141pp. In good condition.