Turning Back the Sun

Meh. This is the second of Colin Thubron's fiction books I have been underwhelmed with. Love Thubron as a non-fiction writer, fiction falls flat so far.
Set in an anonymous location, which seems to be southern Africa, purposely disguised by using terminology like ‘The Capital' and ‘the town'. However it mentions desert, tribal indigenous people, gazelles, silver mining.
It speaks of race, and deals with relationships of the principal character Rayner with his childhood friends and his girlfriend.It is a strange book, dealing with a series of murderers, the victims being white farmers and townspeople, by the indigenous people (called 'savages' in the book). This and a mystery disease which manifests itself as a brown skin growth.We jump back and forwards - a bit of Rayner's history, some discussions with a psychologist (or psychiatrist), a bit of the current. He gets a letter, and has the opportunity to return to The Capital to inherit his aunts house and take up a job. He visits, catches up with some childhood friends, turns down the job to return to the Town. For me the book just ends, without resolution.

Couple of edits. This is actually the third Thubron fiction novel I have read, all two stars.
I also see one of the other editions has a book description saying this is set in Australia. It could be - the ‘savages' are certainly written in such a way as they seem far more Aboriginal than African, but the white character names are not very British (Rayner, Ivar, Leszec, Felicie etc), and the mention of gazelle doesn't tie... anyone know whether Thubron ever said?