Book Log 2013 #3: The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden

I've not seen the movie, but if it's anywhere as good as the book I need to rectify that. I really enjoyed (to the extent that you can enjoy a book with Idi Ami as a main character) this study in how power can infect an otherwise intelligent person and make them think that the truly horrible is actually some version of normal (or at least pretend that it is).


Not that the main character, Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan, is fully in control of himself. The very nature of a dictatorship means that no one is beyond suspicion, and whether Garrigan plans to run or reconsider the request of the British embassy to give Amin a lethal dose of something, the idea that he's free enough to do so is mistaken. The worst part is that Garrigan is stuck either way - he can tend to Amin and become complicit in his crimes, or try to get out one way or another and risk serious injury or death.

It's not always an easy book - nothing related to the Amin period is easy - but it's a great study of what absolute power does to both the person with it and the people who fall within its orbit.