This is an exciting debut novel. It is the story of one Nicholas Garrigan, a young Scottish doctor who is assigned to be the personal physician to Uganda's famous dictator, Idi Amin. Yet the young doctor discovers, to his own cost, that one can never be totally removed from the wild excesses of others... I read the first half of this novel breathlessly. The depiction of Uganda is intriguing. Perhaps this is due to morbid fascination: most people will be aware of Amin's bloody history. The knowledge that everything will go wrong draws you further into this book. Foden presents a compelling portrait of Amin, even to the extent of making him likeable. For instance, there is Amin's eccentric love of all things Scottish, and the peculiar messages he sends to other heads of state. But there is always a palpable fear for Garrigan whenever he's in Amin's presence. Amin is dangerous, for Garrigan never knows what he's going to do next, and how he will become embroiled in his bloody vengeance... I found the resolution to be quite disappointing. In his bid to escape Uganda, Garrigan literally stumbles across the worse excesses of Amin's regime, almost tripping over a pile of corpses. This is the only part of the novel where Foden's otherwise excellent research overwhelms. Uganda's bloody history is already well known, and it would have been far more effective for Garrigan to have remained in ignorance about the worst excesses. Garrigan becomes a mere cipher in Foden's bid to depict the downfall of Amin. But this is only really disappointing in contrast to the excellent first part. Overall, it well deserves its critical success.

Idi Amin's bizarre and brutal eight years of dictatorship in Uganda are the setting for this assured debut. The narrator is Nicholas Garrigan, a young Scottish doctor who arrives in Uganda for a contract job at the same time as Amin's 1971 coup. The book is his recollection of his two years in a small town clinic and six years as Amin's personal doctor in Kampala. His story continues the Conradian tradition of the European man who comes to Africa and becomes transformed through his contact with evil. Amin is Garrigan's Kurtz, and while the doctor and other expats generally turn a blind eye to the truckloads of political prisoners being taken to the countryside to be executed, eventually Garrigan is dragged face to face with Amin's horror.

Of course this isn't pure Conrad, rather it's cut with a bit of William Boyd, another Englishman writer who's written compelling fiction about modern Africa and the legacy of colonial rule. For the horror here isn't that Garrigan begins to understand Amin (after all who could really hope to understand a man of Amin's awesome eccentricity), but begins to like him in an odd way. And it's not that the doctor is a weak character, he's actually remarkably average, and thus very much like ourselves. The reader is unable to to find solace in making easy smug judgments about Garrigan's gradual moral slide as he sucked more and more into Amin's confidence and makes small compromises with himself. Amin is a great character in his own right, lurching from buffoonery to gluttony to sly cunning to sheer incomprehensibility at the drop of a hat. Of course Fodden had a lot to work with, as many of Amin's deeds and speeches are classic examples of truth really being stranger than fiction.

Speaking oh which, Fodden went to great lengths in researching this novel, interviewing a wide range of people who witnessed Amin's reign. Alas, the Saudi government wouldn't grant him permission to interview Amin, who is still alive and living on a Saudi pension in Jeddah. Garrigan is loosely modeled on Bob Astles, a British WW2 veteran who somehow became Amin's closest advisor. Altogether a very good read, regrettably Fodden's next two books apparently don't live up to this one.

Deciding it is time to cut the parental cord, Scotsman Nicholas Garrigan, who recently became a doctor, accepts an assignment in Uganda. After arriving in Kampala, Nicholas learns that his assignment is at a hospital in a remote area of the jungle. On his way there, he stops to help Idi Amin, who hurt his ankle while driving a car.

A few months later, the idealistic Nicholas becomes Amin's personal physician as the dictator is going through a Scottish stage. Nicholas is charmed by the wit of Amin and enjoys being part of the inner sanctum even as his countrymen plead with him to help them with Amin. As the Scotsman realizes the impact of the horrendous actions of the dictator that he invariable condoned with his inertia, Amin is toppled. Nicholas flees back to England where he is considered a traitor to his people, profession, and the human race.

From the perspective of Amin's personal physician, THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND shows incredible insight into one of the most vicious regimes of the twentieth century. Nicholas is a Faustian type character whose ideals fall to the charismatic, energetic, and clever Amin. The novel would be great just based on how well the story line brings Africa to life. However, what turns Giles Foden's novel into a masterpiece is his brilliant capturing of the complete character of Amin as being more than just the killing monster everyone knows him to be. This fascinating yet tragic book is on this reviewer's top ten novels of the year.

Harriet Klausner

Foden's The Last King of Scotland was an unusual novel, and so well-written, that it was to be feared his second would fall short - such is not the case. He has produced a rip-roaring account of the seige of the town of Ladysmith during the Boer War of 1899, filled with memorable characters both fictional and real (Churchill, Ghandi, Buller, Kitchner). The harrowing account of the suffering of civilians and soldiers during the seige is unforgettably brought to life. Although described as a love story, the romance element plays a secondary role in this gripping historical novel. The writer's style may appear to be hit or miss at first --so many characters, so many differing viewpoints --but the reader comes to understand that the very uncertainity of the style is a mirror reflection of the uncertainty of the lives and times of the people involved. I thought that the last section, "Monologues of the Dead", was a most fitting end for a really good book.

THIS IS AN INTERESTING READ, PARTICULARLY FOR SOMEONE INQUISITIVE ABOUT HISTORY AND AT TIMES SITUATIONS LEADING UP TO WORLD WAR II. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND SEEMS ACCURATE AND THE CHARACTERS REAL. FOR AWHILE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BOOK THE PACE OF THE STORY SLOWS SOMEWHAT, BUT THAT IN ITSELF BLENDS WITH THE ACCOUNT OF THE LONG SIEGE OF THE SMALL SOUTH AFRICAN TOWN OF LADYSMITH BY THE BOER FORCES IN 1899. SOME HISTORICAL CHARACTERS ARE REFERRED TO INCLUDING LIEUTENANT WINSTON CHURCHILL, GENERAL BULLER AND OTHERS, BUT THE STORY FOCUSES MAINLY ON THE INTERACTION OF BIRTISH SOLDIERS AND LOCAL TOWNSPEOPLE AND THE WAY THEY DEAL WITH THE SIEGE OF THER TOWN AND WITH THEMSELVES. EACH SETTLER HAS A DIFFERENT STORY AND REASON FOR BEING IN THAT PLACE AT THAT TIME. ALL ARE WAITING FOR THE RELIEF OF LADYSMITH, IF IT COMES. THIS NOVEL IS A TYPE OF FORCAST FOR SOME ASPECTS OF MODERN WAR AND SIEGE SITUATIONS THAT ARE PLAYED OUT TO-DAY.

Do not be misled by the jacket cover-a photograph of a beautiful young woman in Victorian dress gazing wide-eyed at an idyllic background scene and suggesting a romantic interlude. The jacket blurb itself refers to a "young woman who finds love and freedom in the midst of a devastating war" and goes on to suggest that this is her story.

Perhaps the publisher is being deliberately ironic here. Ladysmith, South Africa, was the site of one of the most horrific and bloody episodes in the whole sad story of the Boer War, a war that was waged between England and Holland for control of another country's riches and in which thousands of native, as well as foreign, people met unnecessary and unimaginably gory ends. And Foden describes this horror without reservation. I can assure you, "love story" is not what you will remember or care about here.

Foden's characters come from the British ruling class, British journalists (including Winston Churchill), British and Irish regiments, British settlers and expatriates, Indians (including Mahatma Gandhi), native families displaced by the war, and, of course, the Boers. The reader quickly becomes caught up in the lives of individuals from each of these groups, feeling genuine sympathy for many of them and mourning the tragedies which befall them all as the siege and the skirmishes continue unabated. Like the siege itself, there's a hopelessness to each of their stories, which Foden carries to their conclusions (in some cases at the end of World War II) by appending a final section aptly entitled "Monologues of the Dead." This is a beautifully wrought story of unimaginable carnage.