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6th out of 26 books
—
38 voters
The Last King of Scotland
by
Giles Foden
Shortly after his arrival in Uganda, Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan is called to the scene of a bizarre accident: Idi Amin, careening down a dirt road in his red Maserati, has run over a cow. When Garrigan tends to Amin, the dictator, in his obsession for all things Scottish, appoints him as his personal physician. And so begins a fateful dalliance with the central Afri...more
Paperback, 352 pages
Published
October 26th 1999
by Vintage
(first published January 1st 1998)
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Having lived in Uganda, on-and-off, for over 5 years, I was under the (false) impression that Idi Amin was simply another ruthless African military dictator. Open and shut. Did Amin govern Uganda with an iron fist? Without a doubt. Were over 300,000 Ugandans murdered during his presidency? It's a historical fact. Was Amin an uneducated, eccentric baffoon? By western standards, yes. However, as you'll be able to observe from this documentary, Amin was very popular throughout black Africa, especia...more
Disappointing - to me at least - this multiple award winning book didn't just have an wholly unlikeable antagonist in Idi Amin Dada but a really unpleasant protagonist in NG as he calls himself, the Scottish doctor whose eyes we see Uganda through.
Plus points, Foden knows Africa and I recognised many traits and behaviours, plants, patterns of landscape etc, from my own visits to Rwanda - but the minus side is that the book recounts rather than telling a story - the details may be accurate but c...more
Plus points, Foden knows Africa and I recognised many traits and behaviours, plants, patterns of landscape etc, from my own visits to Rwanda - but the minus side is that the book recounts rather than telling a story - the details may be accurate but c...more
The Last King of Scotland, by Giles Foden. A. Produced by Blackstone, narrated by Mirron Willis, downloaded from Audible.
This is a novel, and, as I understand it, a first novel, from a journalist, Giles Foden. He describes, from his research and interviews with people, the horrifying Idi Amin, who took over Uganda in the 70’s through force, ruled for nine years, and murdered over 300,000 people. . The story is narrated through the eyes of Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, who comes from Scotland to work fo...more
This is a novel, and, as I understand it, a first novel, from a journalist, Giles Foden. He describes, from his research and interviews with people, the horrifying Idi Amin, who took over Uganda in the 70’s through force, ruled for nine years, and murdered over 300,000 people. . The story is narrated through the eyes of Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, who comes from Scotland to work fo...more
This book was most of all a big disappointment. I have seen and loved the movie, and it deals with a part of history that many people, uh including myself, know little about but is characterised by excess that should make for an emotionally engaging story.
However, instead of focusing on the broader events, the book chooses to recount very limited experiences of one character. This wouldn't be so bad if the protagonist in question wasn't one of the most spineless, passive and self-absorbed twits...more
However, instead of focusing on the broader events, the book chooses to recount very limited experiences of one character. This wouldn't be so bad if the protagonist in question wasn't one of the most spineless, passive and self-absorbed twits...more
The novel is written in retrospect from the viewpoint of Nicholas Garrigan, a young doctor who emigrates to Uganda in 1971. Just after he arrives there a coup d'etat takes place and Idi Amin becomes president. After working at a hospital in the bush for two years, Nicholas is called on to treat Amin when he is slightly injured in a freak road accident near to the hospital. Soon afterward Nicholas finds himself appointed to the position of personal physician to Amin. The balance of the novel focu...more
This book is the basis for the Oscar-winning movie of the same name starring Forrest Whitaker. The book has a somewhat different story line than the movie however. The story is of a Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan, in the 1970's who goes to Uganda to practice medicine in an idealistic way. He goes and lives in a smaller town for a while and practices in a rural health clinic, doing people much good, and becoming the lover of an Israeli doctor at the same clinic.When he first arrives, Idi Amin...more
Blew through this book in a couple days - couldn't put it down.
The most haunting excerpt from the book comes in chapter 33: "I knew it was simply myself, this casket of emotional defects and diffident, inward-turning passions...Not once, I thought as I lay there in that stinking hut, have you snatched anything glorious or courageous from the world as it passed you by." I, like he, am constantly struggling to pursue nobility in the abyss of circumstances. There but for the grace of god go I.
Roma...more
The most haunting excerpt from the book comes in chapter 33: "I knew it was simply myself, this casket of emotional defects and diffident, inward-turning passions...Not once, I thought as I lay there in that stinking hut, have you snatched anything glorious or courageous from the world as it passed you by." I, like he, am constantly struggling to pursue nobility in the abyss of circumstances. There but for the grace of god go I.
Roma...more
Foden's debut novel provides a fictional narrator's testimony of the rise and fall of one of Africa's most indelible and brutal dictatorships - that of Idi Amin in Uganda over the course of the 1970s. The author brilliantly captures the comic and tragic pastiche of Amin's rule with such realistic description of the this monstrous goliath's excesses. Not only does the reader glimpse the horrors of an unbalanced megalomaniac, but is witness to the cartoonish buffoonery which for so long hid the da...more
Great concept. The fictional retelling of Idi Amin's reign of terror through the eyes of his personal physician, Nick Garrigan.
This one is kind of a mystery to me. I liked it a lot, but it seems to only scratch the surface of possibilities lurking in the subject matter. While Garrigan is exposed to some of the horrors of Uganda, they're kept relatively tame and, in general, the book doesn't delve too deeply into real brutality.
The main character is the most objectionable, pathetic excuse for man...more
This one is kind of a mystery to me. I liked it a lot, but it seems to only scratch the surface of possibilities lurking in the subject matter. While Garrigan is exposed to some of the horrors of Uganda, they're kept relatively tame and, in general, the book doesn't delve too deeply into real brutality.
The main character is the most objectionable, pathetic excuse for man...more
I haven't seen the movie, which is probably better than this book. It wasn't well written. The author used a simile in nearly every sentence; very annoying. The book is from the vantage point of a naive young Scottish doctor who goes to Uganda and ends up being Idi Amin's personal physician. Unfortunately this character is so self-involved that we hear every picayune detail of his life, which is pretty boring. I don't recommend this.
1 like · like · see review
I didn't much care for this one, but I don't think it's a bad book. Maybe it's because I don't much like historical fiction in general, or because the protagonist is hard to feel much sympathy for, but I had to make a concentrated effort to get to the end.
Nicholas Garrigan, the fictional Scottish physician, isn't a bad guy--he's just extremely passive. He watched as things went on around him that he didn't agree with and didn't bother getting out of the situation. In all fairness, he didn't have...more
Nicholas Garrigan, the fictional Scottish physician, isn't a bad guy--he's just extremely passive. He watched as things went on around him that he didn't agree with and didn't bother getting out of the situation. In all fairness, he didn't have...more
1 like · like · see review
The last King of Scotland was an OK book. Basically the thing that bothered me the most of the book was that there was way too much detail on the useless stuff and not enough information on the important stuff, for example
"I retied my dressing gown - it had fallen open, and I always feel exposed when that happens, even when there is no-one else in the house - and poured boiling water over the coffee I was making. The grounds expanded, fattening the wet sac of the filter. I watched as the water...more
"I retied my dressing gown - it had fallen open, and I always feel exposed when that happens, even when there is no-one else in the house - and poured boiling water over the coffee I was making. The grounds expanded, fattening the wet sac of the filter. I watched as the water...more
Boy, did I love this book. I read it long before I saw the movie, and I could feel Idi Amin's energy and voice coming off the pages like the heat from a sunbaked street. The movie was good too, Forest Whitaker was a very believable Amin, and oddly enough, while I read the book I heard the type of voice Whitaker gave to Amin.
What I like most about this book is the dark but often comic portrayal of Idi Amin. The man was a monster, that you just hate to love him in this book. Foden grew up in Afri...more
What I like most about this book is the dark but often comic portrayal of Idi Amin. The man was a monster, that you just hate to love him in this book. Foden grew up in Afri...more
The subject is interesting to say the least - Idi Amin was one of the scariest people to become famous in the 70s, when I was a young child. I remember seeing him on TV once and asking my mother who he was; and to give her credit, she told me about the rumors of cannibalism that were going around. But my mom and I share the same weird interest in things that are, well, weird.
The main character of the book, Nicholas Garrigan, was a disappointment. For a person who got through med school, he doesn...more
The main character of the book, Nicholas Garrigan, was a disappointment. For a person who got through med school, he doesn...more
This is a difficult book. I went into this book knowing its basic premise (a British doctor moves to Uganda to work in a clinic and becomes the personal physican for Idi Amin), and so I knew that gruesome scenes would occur in its pages. On the other hand is the narrator of the book (the main character? one could argue the main character is Amin, the man that moves the action forward), a man so dislikable that I had trouble finishing the final chapters. It is not that Garrigan actively participa...more
The Last King of Scotland chronicles the rise and fall of Idi Amin, the Ugandan dictator through the eyes of a naive Scottish doctor named Nicholas Garrigan. From a historical context, the story is quite interesting. It is obvious that Foden did his research and he provides an interesting view on Amin. Although Foden did have to take some liberties with filling in the blanks on Amin's character, I think he does a good job in providing a different viewpoint and showing differences between Amin th...more
It is interesting how much I struggled to decide whether Nicholas was a character born of Foden's imagination or somebody who actually lived and witnessed the horror in Uganda during Idi Amin's days. I don't want the answer. He's too real to doubt. I was born many years after Amin had come and gone. But I was nonetheless told many stories about this ruthless dictator from my neighboring country. At the time it sounded like some horror designed to scare us as children. Now, I have come across man...more
I was lucky enough to read this novel as part of a University module, on which Giles Foden lectured. (He compared this book to The Private Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg). Although I found this slow to get into, I absolutely loved it. It was really interesting and having Foden talk about it was even more so. (I think it was the only lecture all term that EVERYONE turned up to!) It opened my eyes to a period of very recent history that I know far too little about. The duality of...more
This was an incredible book. You read the story of a young man with a dream. He wants to explore and help make a difference. He finds himself in the county's of Uganda and somehow ends up in the web of a madman, a dictator, a "king" who is a tyrant in every sense of the word. You see vivid imagery and horror played out in the eyes of our narrator, Doctor Nicholas Garrigan. Be thankful that when you put this book down you don't have to worry about who is watching your every move. You don't need t...more
The Last King of Scotland is Giles Foden's debut novel of Idi Amin's fictional physician Nicolas Garrigan. Garrigan like most westerners goes to Uganda full of good intentions and idealism. Through the unfortunate run in of Amin's mazerati with a hapless cow Garrigan finds himself inescapably drawn into the horrifying and fascinating orbit of the legendary tyrant. Through the course of the novel Amin becomes more ruthless and erratic. Garrigan continuely allows Amin's charisma to cloud his own b...more
I read this book while I was visiting the UK. I was in Wales. I was so close to Scotland! This book takes you in the "head" of one of the most ruthless Dictators of our time. Idi Amin was the third President of Uganda from 1971-1979. Dr. Nicholas Garrigan a young Scottish Dr., who travels to Uganda to help the people and try to make a difference, becomes Amin's personal assistant and family Dr. and finds himself in an unbelievable love predicament! Lots of surprises and drama in this one. The mo...more
Just started this book after watching the film. Based upon fictional accounts of a young Dr Nicholas Garrigan who upon leaving college left Scotland for Uganda. It was during an accident that he was asked to treat Idi Amin. Although the book is fictional in its main character it is supposedly based upon a true life character who acted as an aide to Amin. This book does depict Amin as a childish character always looking for approval or his alter ego as the dictator who was responsible for 300,00...more
A rather horrifying book. A little slow to get started, in my opinion, but once it does you get a sense of the world of charisma and fear in which the main character is living. What it must be like, to be afraid to even write in one's private diary, to see the grisly effects of torture born of madness. I didn't really love the style of writing, and I didn't really like many of the characters all that much (though I gather that was the point), so it doesn't rate higher than three stars, but it wa...more
I don't know what I was expecting, but I finished the book feeling let down. It says it's a novel, but it reads as a memoir, and I'm not sure what of the facts they talk about really happened, or what is just being used to give the story more drama and/or credibility.
The ending seemed unsatisfying for me somehow. I really liked the premise of the story, but I still felt let down by the story. Maybe that's mean to say, seeing is how I went in not knowing what I was going to get. So how can I feel...more
The ending seemed unsatisfying for me somehow. I really liked the premise of the story, but I still felt let down by the story. Maybe that's mean to say, seeing is how I went in not knowing what I was going to get. So how can I feel...more
I read this book after seeing a preview of the movie coming out soon. Hey…I like Scotland, and I like African history, should have been a great mix. This was a novel about Idi Amin’s Scottish doctor and while it wasn’t great, it reminds me that I shouldn’t completely write off historical fiction. I just put this down and can’t exactly put my finger on what I didn’t like about this book, but it didn’t completely hold me through the end. I loved the beginning, but my interest seemed to fade and I...more
So of course, my title refers to the character of Idi Amin rather than the man himself. In his first novel, Giles Foden tells the story of Nicholas Garrigan, a Scottish doctor who becomes Idi Amin's personal physician after the madman's rise to power in Uganda. Garrigan is personally torn between the facts of Amin's cruel military dictatorship, which he gets first- and second-hand, and the charms of the man in the flesh. This novel is told from the point of view of Garrigan writing his memoir of...more
Apr 01, 2008
Nancy Oakes
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
anyone
From what I've seen in the reviews of this book, either people really really liked it or they really really disliked it. Personally, I liked it (not really really) and created opportunities to be in my car to continue the story (this edition is the unabridged audiobook). Let me note here that I did see the movie prior to reading the book -- a definite plus in this case since the screenplay of the movie was changed quite a bit from the book.
The narrator is one Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, a Scottish d...more
The narrator is one Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, a Scottish d...more
Giles Foden, the author, writes for the Guardian, and you can tell by his style. Dry, deceptively simple delivery, packed with a light punch and a hardened and weathered knowledge of global affairs. It's always a bit strange for me to read a fictional account of a very real time in history. There's this part of me that wonders why I am horrified by the grisly parts -- is it the part of me that thinks it really happened or is it my imagination that is stretched by the mere possibilty of it as pre...more
It feels wierd rating this book as "liked it", when it is such an ugly story. I remember hearing abouut Idi Amin when I was a kid, and he was this epic force of evil, like the boogie man or Charles Manson. This book fleshes out the man and doesn't in anyway portray him as being a nice guy ... Its just that at this point in my life Idi Amin is no longer the complete epitome of evil, he is just one of so many brutal and prodigiously deadly men who have gained power and ruled by fear and force.
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| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| League of Extraor...: The Last King of Scotland - Sequel? | 1 | 2 | Mar 02, 2012 05:03am | |
| League of Extraor...: What do you think of Dr. Garrigan? | 1 | 2 | Mar 02, 2012 04:23am |
Giles Foden was born in Warwickshire in 1967. His family moved to Malawi in 1971 where he was brought up. He was educated at Yarlet Hall and Malvern College boarding schools, then at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he read English. He worked as a journalist for Media Week magazine, then became an assistant editor on the Times Literary Supplement. He was deputy literary editor of The Guardian...more
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“... la kuvunda halian ubani. There is no incense for something rotting. And that is the condition of the world. This I know.”
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Have you read "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families"?
It is a pretty amazing book about the genocide in Rwanda...more
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May 13, 2009 01:45pm