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Title: The Last King of Scotland

Author: Giles Foden

Narrator: Forbes Masson

Format: Abridged

Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-23-13

Publisher: Canongate Faber

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

What would it be like to become Idi Amin's personal physician? Giles Foden's best-selling thriller is the story of a young Scottish doctor drawn into the heart of the Ugandan dictator's surreal and brutal regime.

Privy to Amin's thoughts and ambitions, he is both fascinated and appalled. As Uganda plunges into civil chaos he realises action is imperative - but which way should he jump?

Members Reviews:

A fascinating, if somewhat wordy, portrait of Uganda and Idi Amin

The Last King of Scotland is a fictional novel about Uganda and the rise and fall of Idi Amin as told through the eyes of the protagonist, Dr. Nicholas Garrison. Dr. Garrison comes from Scotland to Uganda to serve as a doctor in a medical clinic. Through happenstance, he works on Idi Amin after Amin was in a car accident. Idi Amin decided to have Dr. Garrison become his personal physician. During that time, Dr. Garrison also became a confidant of Aminâs.

I was looking forward to reading this book and learning more about Ugandan culture and on the reign of Idi Amin. I did finish the book feeling a connection to a place, such as any good historical novel will do. I did not, however, feel any connection to the protagonist. I found Doctor Garrison to be a person lacking in depth and easily swayed by those around him, which may have been the authorâs intention.

The first third of the book dealt with the Doctorâs arrival in Uganda and his living and working in Uganda prior to his first encounter with Idi Amin. I really enjoyed this section. It gave me an appreciation of how challenging life was at that time in Uganda, and it described the culture and the people very well. However, this section began to drag and it was past time to move on to the next section of the book.

The last two-thirds focused on Dr. Garrisonâs work as Idi Aminâs personal physician and on Aminâs dictatorial and brutal reign of Uganda, and subsequent fall from power. I was in my early teens during Aminâs reign and knew of his atrocities, but reading about them was very difficult in some places (a sign of good writing). I felt the author did an excellent job of creating a portrait of Idi Amin as a man, a military leader, and a dictator. The description of Amin made it very clear that he suffered from delusions of grandeur and was in most likelihood not mentally stable, perhaps even bipolar; which puts me in mind of some current dictators in the world.

Although the story is very good, I struggled with reading through a number of chapters. In addition to the first part of the book dragging, there were other sections of the book that were too wordy and tangential to the main story. For example, one fifteen-page chapter described one of Aminâs weddings in unnecessary and excruciating detail down to the church's crown molding. Another example is taking three pages to describe how to clean battle wounds. For me, the book started on the wrong note when the protagonist discussed his defecation at the very beginning of the book. I really did not need these unnecessary visuals - Amin provided enough awful visuals (that were story related).

I learned a great deal about Africa, Uganda and Idi Amin through this book.