From the Man Booker Prize–winner of The Promise: "This tale of ill-fated journeys through Greece, Africa and India shows" the author of The Quarry "at a superb new high" (The Guardian).

In this newest novel from South African writer Damon Galgut, a young loner travels across eastern Africa, Europe, and India. Unsure what he's after, and reluctant to return home, he follows the paths of travelers he meets...

In 1912, the SS Birmingham approaches India. On board is Morgan Forster, novelist and man of letters, who is embarking on a journey of discovery. As Morgan stands on deck, the promise of a strange new future begins to take shape before his eyes. The seeds of a story start to gather at the corner of his mind: a sense of impending menace, lust in close confines, under a hot, empty sky. It will be another 12 years, and a second time spent in India, before...

Galgut leads his readers into the developing heart of postapartheid South Africa, a landscape being reshaped by new waves of money and power. Adam Napier leaves Johannesburg looking for a fresh start. Jobless and directionless, but with a head full of literary ambitions, he moves into his brothers dilapidated house on the edge of a backwater town. One day he encounters Canning, a man who claims Adam saved his life in their school days, but whom Adam...