Heartbreaker: Christiaan Barnard and the first heart transplant

Heartbreaker: Christiaan Barnard and the first heart transplant

By James Styan

Jonathan Ball. R280

In this new biography of Chris Barnard we not only learn about the life of SA’s most famous surgeon, from his Beaufort West childhood through his studies locally and abroad to his prominent marriages – and divorces – but James Styan also examines the impact of the historic heart transplant on Barnard’s personal life and South African society at large, where apartheid legislation often made the difficulties of medicine even more convoluted. The role of black medical staff like Hamilton Naki is explored, as is the intense rivalry that arose between other famous heart surgeons and Barnard. How did Barnard manage to beat them all in this race of life and death? How much did his famous charisma have to do with it all? And in the light of his later years, his subsequent successes and considerable failures, what is Barnard’s legacy today? Styan covers it all in this fascinating new account of a real heartbreaker.