The Impostor
By Damon Galgut
Atlantic Books £12.99, 320 pages
FT Bookshop price: £10.39

Strangers have a habit of suddenly pitching up in Damon Galgut’s books. At the start of his mesmerising new novel The Impostor, the stranger in question is a policeman who, “one hungry hand extended,” steps out from behind a tree to entrap the novel’s protagonist, Adam, in a minor traffic violation.