New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (2005.) dj. Novel by this South African Noble lauriat: "Paul Bannerman, an ecologist in Africa, believes he controls the trajectory of his life, with the markers of vocation and marriage. But when he's diagnosed with thyroid cancer and prescribed treatment that makes him radioactive and for a period a danger to others, he questions, as Auden wrote, 'What authority gives/ Existence its surprise.' " 187 pp. ISBN: 0-374-161704.