| The Last King of Scotland | 
 enlarge | Author: Giles Foden
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  28 reviews
Sales Rank: 242433
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0375703314
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780375703317
ASIN: 0375703314
Publication Date: October 26, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
No, we're not talking Bonnie Prince Charlie here. The title character of Giles Foden's debut novel, The Last King of Scotland, is none other than Idi Amin, the former dictator of Uganda. Told from the viewpoint of Nicholas Garrigan, Amin's personal physician, the novel chronicles the hell that was Uganda in the 1970s. Garrigan, the only son of a Scots Presbyterian minister, finds himself far away from Fossiemuir when he accepts a post with the Ministry of Health in Uganda. His arrival in Kampala coincides with the coup that leads to President Obote's overthrow and Idi Amin Dada's ascendancy to power. Garrigan spends only a few days in the capital city, however, before heading out to his assignment in the bush. But a freak traffic accident involving Amin's sports car and a cow eventually brings the good doctor into the dictator's orbit; a few months later, Garrigan is recalled from his rural hospital and named personal physician to the president. Soon enough, Garrigan finds himself caught between his duty to his patient and growing pressure from his own government to help them control Amin. From Nicholas Garrigan's catbird seat, Foden guides us through the horrors of Amin's Uganda. It would be simple enough to make the dictator merely monstrous, but Foden defies expectation, rendering him appealing even as he terrifies. The doctor "couldn't help feeling awed by the sheer size of him and the way, even in those unelevated circumstances, he radiated a barely restrained energy.... I felt--far from being the healer--that some kind of elemental force was seeping into me." And Garrigan makes a fine stand-in for Conrad's Marlow as he travels up a river of blood from naivete to horrified recognition of his own complicity. As if this weren't enough, Foden also treats us to a finely drawn portrait of Africa in all its natural, political, and social complexity. The Last King of Scotland makes for dark but compelling reading. --Alix Wilber
Product Description
Shortly after his arrival in Uganda, Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan is called to the scene of a bizarre accident: Idi Amin, careening down a dirt road in his red Maserati, has run over a cow. When Garrigan tends to Amin, the dictator, in his obsession for all things Scottish, appoints him as his personal physician. And so begins a fateful dalliance with the central African leader whose Emperor Jones-style autocracy would transform into a reign of terror.
In The Last King of Scotland Foden's Amin is as ridiculous as he is abhorrent: a grown man who must be burped like an infant, a self-proclaimed cannibalist who, at the end of his 8 years in power, would be responsible for 300,000 deaths. And as Garrigan awakens to his patient's baroque barbarism--and his own complicity in it--we enter a venturesome meditation on conscience, charisma, and the slow corruption of the human heart. Brilliantly written, comic and profound, The Last King of Scotland announces a major new talent.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 23 more reviews...
to know fear... August 24, 2008
From what I've seen in the reviews of this book, either people really really liked it or they really really disliked it. Personally, I liked it, and I liked it a lot. Let me note here that I did see the movie prior to reading the book -- a definite plus in this case since the screenplay of the movie was changed quite a bit from the book.
The narrator is one Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, a Scottish doctor who is somewhat disillusioned with life under his father and life in general -- so he ends up in Uganda, where he is helping out at a clinic there, until a chance meeting with Idi Amin changes his life forever. When Nicholas had arrived in Uganda, Amin had not yet cemented his power, but after the freak accident that put Nicholas in Amin's path, Nicholas found himself in the position of Amin's personal physician and moved to the capital. On one level the story is about Nicholas and his dealings with Amin, but on another level, it turns out to be about his examination of his own soul as he wonders why he has failed to see the truth about Amin, and what it says about him that he let himself become so immersed in and remained somewhat in denial of the evils of the entire situation and of Amin himself until it was nearly too late. As Garrigan said at one point to a reporter, "You've never known real fear," but it's really obvious that he was somewhat fascinated by Amin at the same time he was afraid. It wasn't until some time after he eventually found himself on the other side of Amin's generosity that he realized that he was probably a marked man and tried to find a way out; yet in the meantime, he stayed put while others were cruelly tortured and while whole villages & peoples were destroyed.
This is fiction, so if you're looking for a book to fill in holes in your knowledge about the reign of Idi Amin, this may not be what you're looking for. However, if you want something really good to take your mind off things for a while, this book is perfect. And don't expect the movie between the covers. I can definitely recommend this one to anyone interested in the topic. The writer did a great job.
 Fantastic January 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Absolutely fantastic story in my opinion. For the most part I had a difficult time putting the book down, but I must admit there were a couple occasions where I just skimmed the pages. However, do not let that turn you away. The novel is written in an intelligent yet easy to understand way, and provides bundles of fascinating information. Idi Amin proves to be a fascinating and compelling character who I personally found incredibly intriguing. How can a man with a behaviour that is almost child like be so brilliant, charismatic, and so horribly cruel? Not only that, the strange relationship between Nicholas and Amin is equally intriguing. This relationship makes you almost like Amin, until you remember the atrocious things he had done. Overall a great read, one that leaves you with a great feeling upon finishing it.
 African monster November 7, 2007
The novel tries to blend facts and fiction,e.g. it ' s written as a personal diary by a young Scottish doctor N.Gerrigan,who is after graduation sent to Uganda ,already on the brink of a new catastrophe .Upon arrival , he is faced with the real Africa: humidity , unbearable heat , general chaos , delapitaded buildings ,rickety cars ,and soldiers everywhere .He is sent to the central part ,where he is also soon face to face with medicine at its most basic, where everything is improvised . In the midst of it all, he slowly gets to know African people and their habits and rituals .As is somehow a rule in Africa ,relative peace does not last long , as a new coup brings to the throne a new leader , famous Idi Amin Dada ,whose taking of power is , at least at first ,viewed by many as sort of a blessing ,as he is seen as a representative of Africans themselves , the first black leader ,almost a new ,but black messiah! From then on , the bloody path to hell is inevitable .In the process , the two main characters' fates become intertwined ,as one day doctor Garrigan is called to immediately attend to Idi ,who's had a car crash ,twisting his hand and crying like a little baby .As a sign of gratitude , he names dr. Garrigan his personal physician ,thus taking him in the bowels of the beast ,to his personal harem with 20 children and numerous wives , and many illiterate but menacing courtiers ,where dr Garrigan becomes a quiet observer of some of the world's most baffoonish public statements and actions , culminating in a short tour of infamous State Research torture chambers on par with anything Stalin and Tito came up with !In short : recommended to anyone interested in personal savagery and sadism seen as something completely normal !
Mistah Kurtz--he alive again... September 29, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In Giles Foden's fictionalized account of a Scottish doctor's experiences as the personal physician to Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada, evil isn't banal, after all--it's pompous, unpredictable, oafish, ostentatious, alternately unspeakably cruel and imbued with childlike exuberance, and, perhaps most startling of all, it's often more acutely wise to the ways of human nature than we care to admit. It throbs with the amorality of the life-force itself. Whatever else it might be, evil in the considerable form of Idi Amin is anything but boring.
*The Last King of Scotland* is a novel set firmly in the classic tradition of Joseph Conrad's *Heart of Darkness.* In this version of the Conradian theme, a young white doctor, highly-educated, civilized, British, heads to an under-developed Uganda driven by a mix of boredom, aimlessness, and the dim intention of doing some good. He's not there long when control of the country is forcibly seized by a Ugandan general named Idi Amin. Dr. Nicholas Garrigan and General Amin meet by accident--literally--when Garrigan is called to the scene of a roadside collision between a cow and a red Maserati drive by the new Ugandan president for life. Amin takes a liking to Nick--whose Scottish ancestry appeals to the general's obsession with Scotland--and offers the young doctor the position as his personal physician. It's an offer Nick can't refuse, not that he tries too hard to do so. After all, it's a rather prestigious post, better than working in the bush, and Amin is a dynamic and charismatic figure. There've been some rumors, but there are always rumors. Amin doesn't seem so bad, no worse than dozens of others in his position...not yet.
And so begins Nick's journey towards the heart of darkness and the beast who dwells there, propelled on his way by a quickening series of rationalizations, compromises, and choices that slowly erode his conscience and leave him a victim of circumstances. In the end, it's all too clear and all too late. Idi Amin is a monster and Garrigan is his doctor, his confidant, and his apologist--if only because by explaining Amin, Garrigan explains himself.
Fiction in which major historical personages like Amin play a major role always runs the risk of straining credulity, ringing false, or offering a pale imitation of the original. What with truth being stranger than fiction and all. Especially such recent, bizarre, and well-documented history. How do you top the real-life stories of cannibalism, the heads in the freezer, etc.? But Foden does a remarkable job in breathing life into Amin's larger-than-life persona and his many notorious exploits. Foden is equally remarkable in his portrayal of Nicholas Garrigan. Written in the first person, supposedly as a journal, Foden so convincingly and engagingly describes everything from the presenting symptoms of rare (and disgusting) tropical diseases to field dressing gunshot wounds, you'd think Garrigan must be a doctor himself, or at the very least, had some sort of extensive medical training, although his author bio doesn't mention either. His Uganda is so vividly realized you don't doubt his narrator for an instant. In any event, the cumulative result is a novel that often doesn't read like fiction at all, but the memoir it's fictionally supposed to be. Only towards the end of *Last King* does this verisimilitude quaver a bit with the doctor's final confrontations with Amin and the consequences of Garrigan's Ugandan adventure with the British government and media. But this is a novel, after all, and while *Last King* makes an intelligent "thriller" Foden also does a perfectly credible job of speaking for Amin, who is himself a very effective mouthpiece for the heart of darkness--by turns seductive and horrific, satanic and angelic, the source of a running stream-of-conscious monologue that expresses the ongoing dialectic between good and evil in our own hearts; a debate we begin uneasily to suspect--not the least of which in our own fascination with figures such as Amin--is not strictly a matter of either/or.
An old-school novel of adventure and ideas, politics and moral dilemma made new again for our ambivalent and morally bankrupt age, *The Last King of Scotland* might very well be a genuine classic itself one of these days and it's depiction of an "innocent" man's journey to the Kurtz of the late 20th century take on even more mythic proportions. Until then, it's a timely, exciting, and excellently written story you'll find hard to put down until you run out of pages--and even harder to forget when you do.
Idi Amin rules (this book) July 29, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
So of course, my title refers to the character of Idi Amin rather than the man himself. In his first novel, Giles Foden tells the story of Nicholas Garrigan, a Scottish doctor who becomes Idi Amin's personal physician after the madman's rise to power in Uganda. Garrigan is personally torn between the facts of Amin's cruel military dictatorship, which he gets first- and second-hand, and the charms of the man in the flesh. This novel is told from the point of view of Garrigan writing his memoir of sorts, so that he is able to reflect on his time in Uganda and his connections (or lack thereof) with the atrocities committed there.
I wanted to read this book before seeing the movie, so now I have reason to get myself to the rental store. Tales of Forrest Whittaker's performance echo among the treetops, but in reading this book, it becomes clear that Whittaker had great material to work with. Foden's portrayal of Amin is masterful--Amin is a character larger than life in both his horror and energy and maybe even charisma, yet somehow identifiable, which is what makes him all the more scary. From his sermon from the platform of a device that lets him emerge almost god-like from a pool, a sermon he gives while chowing down on chicken and soda, to his moments of dementia when in his torture dungeon, Amin is a superb character, well worth the hatred and planning done by other characters in this book, plans to overthrow him and even kill him, plans that of course sometimes cross Doctor Garrigan's path. There is a moment later in the book, during the time of the anticipated downfall, that gets almost too unreal, too horror-movie, and Foden doesn't really convince during that chapter, which is unfortunate, because he succeeds quite well with Amin through most of the rest of the book.
But also, Doctor Garrigan's introduction of sorts, the situating of his life and viewpoints in the days before meeting Amin, was much less than interesting. I found myself glancing through many of these paragraphs rather than avidly reading them. Only when Amin came full force into the story did I finally know what drive I was missing, but unfortunately Doctor Garrigan and the historical background takes up the first 120 pages of the book or so.
It seems to be a kind of unwinnable trap that Foden fell into and couldn't quite figure a way out. Clearly, Amin himself would not have served well as the primary focus of this book. His psychology was too wavering, and I had no interest in finding out the source of his being. Garrigan was a much more human character, with a moral, ethical and philosophical dilemma that is clearly the stuff of good fiction, but ultimately he does not pan out as an engaging figure to center the book on. As alluded to before, Foden's work with Amin is strong enough to pull this book through in the end, but the overall framework left a little to be desired. A good read, once you get past the obligatory set-up and character spotlights to get the real narrative going.
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