num_pages: 352
description: 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 African leader whose Emperor Jones-style autocracy would transform into a reign of terror.In The Last King of Scotland Foden's Amin is as ridiculous as he is abhorrent: a grown man who must be burped like an infant, a self-proclaimed cannibalist who, at the end of his 8 years in power, would be responsible for 300,000 deaths. And as Garrigan awakens to his patient's baroque barbarism--and his own complicity in it--we enter a venturesome meditation on conscience, charisma, and the slow corruption of the human heart. Brilliantly written, comic and profound, The Last King of Scotland announces a major new talent.
language: English
title: The Last King of Scotland
titlecomplete: The Last King of Scotland
characters: Idi Amin
genres: Historical, Novels, Uganda, War, Africa, Thriller, Historical Fiction, Audiobook, Contemporary, Fiction
ratings_count: 3982
places: Uganda
awards: awardedAt: 883641600000
name: James Tait Black Memorial Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Whitbread Award
category: First Novel, awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Somerset Maugham Award, awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Betty Trask Award
publisher: Vintage