THE IMPOSTOR

After losing his job, Adam Napier moves to his brother’s empty house in backwoods South Africa. While he wants to write poetry, he can’t manage to get the words out. Humphrey Bower’s softly accented voice reads Napier’s increasingly depressing story of drinking, failed ambition, and desolation. Life in postapartheid South Africa is described in illustrative language that flows off Bower’s tongue. The endlessness, the sameness, the timelessness of rural South Africa that invade Napier’s life are captured in Bower’s steady narration. When Canning, a former schoolmate, enters Napier’s life, they become trapped in a series of lies that change their lives forever. Bower’s performance delivers the repetitiveness, the dullness, the monotony of a life without job or goals. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2011]