I have always been interested in the Central African Republic, and since I don't speak French, it is hard to find material on it-so I was very pleased to find a book like this. The Bokassa saga, shows that truth can be stranger than fiction. After all, if the average American turned on the television special featuring a country called the 'Central African Republic', where the ruler converts at will, stages a coronation in the style of Napoleon, and has a harem of wives from throughout the world-chosen at will, they would dismiss it as a fiction.
Yet it was not, Bokassa and many other tyrants were supported by nations seeking to play their role in the Cold War.
It reminds me of Heart of Darkness, which took place in what is now, CAR's neighbor, Congo, formerly Zaire. While, I admire Titley's attempt to try be factual and trace the story in terms of politics and recorded intrigues. But there is little oral testimony, or information on the local culture and sociology.
This is a shame, because I think this story, or could been on par with chronicles such as Killing Fields, and this lacks the side of the victim. Also, Titley never address the brutalities, frankly, any nonacademic who is reading this wants to be titilated by the accusations of cannabalism and torture-and this issues are not addressed at all-neither dismissed or denied, or resolved. Also, the AUTHOR has access to Bokassa's autobiogaphy [of which all but 2 copies still exist] and it is rarely mentioned. All in all, it is not easy to have written this book, the topic carries the day, but I can't help feeling that this has the taste of an incomplete academic lecture series, that could have used an editor and some pungency.

Brian Titley's account of the life of Jean Bedel Bokassa, self-proclaimed Emperor of the Central African Republic, is an unsettling one.

On the one hand, the personal detail that the author builds up on his subject can paint a fascinating and sometimes engaging picture of the Emperor.

After all, Bokassa was the dictator whose behavior was said to cause embarrassment even to other African despots. A caricature figure, who had warned senior government colleagues on different occasions that he was "properly annoyed" and was thinking of "going for a coup d'etat", he rose to power from an impoverished rural background.

As Emperor, however, he was the giver of envelopes of diamonds to visiting dignitaries; the collector and wearer of a huge collection of period-piece French military uniforms and the unrepentant womanizer who accumulated wives from countries as far distant as Romania and Vietnam.

With his subject never too far from the ridiculous, Titley dredges up some fantastic narrative. Even the photographs tell a story - an image on an early page of the book pictures Bokassa together with his favourite young son on the day of the imperial coronation. Africa's Napoleon, resplendent in a velvet robe, is desperately seeking a regal pose. His son, then aged about six, sits sulkily beside his father, his tasseled white sailor suit topped off with a captain's cap at least three sizes too big for him. He looks like he has rushed straight to the ceremony from an audition for the Jackson Five.

On the other hand - and this is the problem for the reader - much of this colour surrounding Bokassa turns out to be dark and foreboding. Although his alleged taste for human flesh has never been fully proven (nor his preference for the throwing of those that displeased him into his swimming pool of crocodiles) his regime was responsible for the torture and death of hundreds of his countrymen. He personally caved in the skulls of some of them with his favourite walking cane.

Can you enjoy a man's more attractive idiosyncracies when his darker ones include participation in the torture of schoolchildren? Titley does try, in an excellent concluding chapter, to put Bokassa into a political context. He killed fewer people than Dictator X. He stole and extorted less money than Dictator Y. He was aided, encouraged and manipulated by the French throughout his period in power. He lived the closing years of his life in (for him) relative poverty and isolation, deserted by his wives and children. He even chose to return from exile to his native country and face state trial.

More opportunities for the reader to adopt an ambivalent attitude to Africa's Napoleon? Probably not. Bokassa's expressions of remorse seem to have been limited to his sense of personal misfortune. And if we are to be asked to judge him less harshly only against a backdrop of more dangerous and more evil men, then we must ask ourselves if Bokassa may, after all, be deserving of the company that he keeps

This is a most interesting book about one of Africa's most extravagant leaders. Brian Titley does not write with particular elegance or wit, but his account of Bokassa's life seems well documented, even-handed and is thoroughly readeable. The details on the coronation ceremonies or the emperor's love life alone are worth the reading. A five star book on a five star general.