Kazuo Ishiguro is a writer renowned for his capacity to create beautifully controlled surfaces and to beautifully evoke the roiling emotions beneath them.

Although the epigraph of Damon Galgut’s novel is taken from Chekhov, it is the ghost of Graham Greene that hovers most palpably over The Good Doctor, and even in the cadence of its title.

Louis Begley is perhaps currently best known as the author of About Schmidt, the novel from which the recent acclaimed film starring Jack Nicholson was adapted.