The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden

 

The Last King of Scotland: Here it is, in Chapter 26, the crux of the novel's drama and moral conflict: Idi Amin said Hitler was right to burn Jews alive with gas. When Nicholas Garrigan, the tale's narrator, hears Willie Brandt, the West German Chancelor, call this statement “an expression of mental derangement,” Nicholas reflects, “I agreed with him, obviously, and yet there I was in the middle of it. My life had already fallen into a pattern that concentrated on Amin. The closer I got to him, the fewer my illusions about him – and still I stayed, more fascinated than frightened.”

Why did Nicholas Garrigan stay? Why didn't he board the first plane and leave Uganda? Giles Foden's The Last King of Scotland tells the tale. And a shocking tale it is, a remarkable first novel by an English author who spent his youth in Africa.

Published in 1998, The Last King of Scotland focuses on documented history within Uganda in the 1970s and features Idi Amin, “President for Life,” as a central character. In this way, the work shares much in common with American author Robert Coover's groundbreaking 1977 A Public Burning, a novel populated with living historical figures, most notably Richard Nixon.

In her New York Times review, Michiko Kakutani described the novel as “an uncomfortable amalgam of black comedy and historical tragedy.” Of course, we might be inclined to take the moral high ground and simply shake our heads and shout No! No! No! - Idi Amin was one of the world's most brutal, demented, murderous dictators and anybody who had anything to do with this evil brute must have been crazy.

An understandable sentiment - and one will undoubtedly pass harsh judgment on Nicholas Garrigan after finishing this novel. However, a reader will have a deeper comprehension of all of the many factors contributing to why Nicholas did what he did.

A point of historic context: Georges Simenon's novel Tropical Moon is set in Gabon, West Africa in 1933. Simenon examines how white French colonialists strongarm the native blacks into submitting to one fiercely maintained ironclad rule: whites can do whatever they want to blacks - an example of unflinching racism running throughout the entire history of whites in Africa.

Forty years later, at a lavish banquet with many white guests present, mostly British officials and their wives, a Ugandan official sounds a gong and reads from a paper: “His Excellency President for Life Field Marshal Al Hadj Doctor Idi Amin Dada, Vc, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire of Africa in General and Uganda in Particular welcomes the Court of Kampala and assembled worthies of the city to this banquet.”

As part of his welcoming speech, Idi Amin proclaims, “And cosmetics too can be bad themselves, and wigs. I do not want Ugandans to wear the hair of dead imperialists or the Africans killed by imperialists...No member of my own family is to wear a wig, or she will cease to be my family member. Because we are all one happy family in Uganda, like it is we are gathered around this table in one single house. Myself, I started cleaning the house until I succeeded in placing indigenous Ugandans in all important posts. Can you remember that even cooks in hotels were white?”­

Idi Amin's message is clear: white rule is at an end; native blacks have taken control and will continue to rule their own lands and peoples.

Nicholas Garrigan, a Scotsman, travels to Idi Amin's Uganda as a young medical doctor having been sent by the British Ministry of Health. And Dr. Nicholas becomes Idi Amin's personal physician after tending to Amin's arm fractured in an auto crash (Amin hit a cow) while speeding along in his flashy red Maserati out in the Ugandan hinterlands, an area of the country where Dr. Nicholas was working as part of the local village clinic.

The bulk of the novel covers the time prior to Nicholas's association with Amin. This to say, Giles Foden devotes many pages to his Scottish narrator, Dr. Nicholas. We learn Nicholas is an effective enough doctor but otherwise walks around as a blustering nincompoop (Michiko Kakutani called him a nightmare version of Forrest Gump). We learn Nicholas's backstory, his growing up under the stern eye of his Presbyterian minister father, his teenage insomnia, his horrific nightmares. We also learn of his time at that rural clinic, including his deep affection for a Jewish lab technician by the name of Sara, a keenly perceptive dark-haired beauty from Israel.

But why did Nicholas continue to associate with Idi Amin? After pondering this question, I think a few ideas are worth considering. Firstly, Joseph Campbell speaks of our desire for being fully alive, to feel the rapture, the intensity of life beating within us. When Nicholas first comes in contact with Idi Amin out there in the hinterlands, our good doctor reports “I felt as if I were encountering a being out of Greek myth.” Idi Amin - 6' 4”, 285 lbs.- huge penetrating eyes, infectious smile, formidable athlete (Idi challenged Muhammad Ali to a boxing match), a man exuding extraordinary power, magnetism and charisma. Idi Amin, repeatedly calls himself the rightful King of Scotland and takes an instant liking to Nicholas the Scot. Idi and Nicholas, Nicholas and Idi – are we talking symbiotic relationship here?

Secondly, consider our human urge to experience risk and danger. As J.G. Ballard was fond of saying: “I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that's my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again ... the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.” Is wishy-washy Nicholas reluctant to return to a lukewarm, lackluster pre-Idi Amin plodding along?

Thirdly, would Nicholas be safe if he attempted to board a plane to put as much turf between himself and Idi Amin? Would it be wise to flee a man who has great international influence, who proclaims himself the greatest politician in the world, that his work is God's work, that anybody who does not obey him is going against God?

With The Last King of Scotland, Giles Foden has written a captivating tale, a novel that will both engross and disturb, a novel that will linger in memory long after you close the book.


English author Giles Foden, born 1967