The Quarry - Softcover

The Quarry, written ten years ago but never published outside of South Africa, is a stark, intense, and crystalline novel in which human nature betrays itself against the desolate backdrop of rural South Africa.

A thrilling parable of death and deception from the Booker-shortlisted Galgut. On a lonely stretch of road a man picks up a hitchhiker. The driver is a minister on his way to a new rural congregation. The passenger, a fugitive. When the minister realizes this, the fugitive kills him. He assumes his vestments and identity, only to discover that one of his first duties as the new minister is to preside over his victim's funeral. As the fugitive and the local police chief play a tense game of cat and mouse, culminating in a pursuit across the desolate veldt, Damon Galgut gives us a spare, devastating combat for man's most prized attribute: freedom.