Talk of the devil
Subtitle: encounters with seven dictators
By: Riccardo Orizio ; translated from the Italian by Avril Bardoni
Contributors: Bardoni, Avril
Publisher: Walker & Company
Published: 2003
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 200
Subjects: Dictators -- Biography; Biography -- 20th century; World politics -- 20th century
Genres: Biography
Work titles: Parola del diavolo.
Description: "Inspired by newspaper clippings he had kept about two former African dictators accused of cannibalism, journalist Riccardo Orizio set out to track down tyrants around the world who had fallen from power - to see if they had gained any perspective on their actions, or if their lives and thoughts could shed any light on our own. The seven encounters chronicled in Talk of the Devil are the result of Orizio's dogged determination and reveal his gifts as an observer and his skill at getting people to reveal themselves. They are also memorable stories in their own right." "Thanks to his conversion to Islam, the unrepentant Idi Amin lives in exile in Saudi Arabia and laughs off his murderous past while still attempting to meddle in Uganda. Jean-Bedel Bokassa, the bloody former Emperor of Central Africa, made the astonishing claim to Orizio that he had received his baptism as thirteenth apostle from Pope Paul VI. Nexhmije Hoxha, the muscle behind her husband, Enver, the former Albanian dictator, defends their brutal Stalinist regime from her prison cell and proudly explains how it worked. Paris-based Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier - in his first interview after fleeing Haiti in 1986 - speaks about voodoo and the women in his life, and laments the loss of his fortune. Colonel Mengistu Haile-Mariam of Ethiopia, Mira Markovic (Slobodan Milosevic's wife), and General Wojeiech Jaruzelski, the former Polish head of state, all claim, in one way or another, that history will do them justice and explain why they were right to subjugate their nations."--Jacket.
Notes: "First published in Great Britain in 2003 by Secker & Warburg"--Verso of t.p