From Publishers Weekly
The author of 2000's Abyssinian Chronicles sets another ambitious narrative of trouble and turmoil near the end of Idi Amin's dictatorship in Uganda, a country "like a madwoman of untold beauty; efforts to save her were bound to be doomed." Bat Katanga, native son and recent postgraduate student at Cambridge University, returns to Uganda to seek his fortune during the chaotic scramble for economic independence and personal enrichment in the 1970s. His education and intelligence immediately—albeit slightly improbably—land him a high-level job in the Ministry of Power and Communications, working for the bloodthirsty, power-hungry General Bazooka, head of the corrupt Anti-Smuggling Unit. The notorious excesses and infighting of the Amin regime are detailed from General Bazooka's perspective as well as that of several others, including beautiful Victoria, the general's former mistress who's now angling for Bat, and mercenary Englishman Robert Ashes, who intends to come out on top, no matter what the cost. When Bat is intimidated into taking a bribe from a Saudi official, the general, whose own standing is in question, has him abducted. In prison, Bat, who is nearly as calculating and Machiavellian as his employers, is forced to re-evaluate everything. Even after his release, the downward trajectory of his life continues, while the country itself plunges toward anarchy. This is a headlong and blurry novel filled with violence and sex, deceit and revenge—a messy, captivating portrait of a desperate time and place.
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From Booklist
It reads like a macabre horror tale--the special agent comes home to find his wife with her head cut off--but the fiction is grounded in the facts of Idi Amin's dictatorship in Uganda in the 1970s, when atrocity was "business as usual." The story begins with Bat Katanga, back from Cambridge University with a math degree, who lands a terrific government job in the bureaucracy. He has an affair with a woman sent to spy on him, gets drawn into power games, and confronts hideous brutality everywhere. Novelist Isegawa lived in Uganda then, and he is not afraid to name names, including those of international banks and foreign governments who did nothing to stop the killings and sometimes benefited from the chaos. The horror of brutal dictatorship has become all too familiar across the globe, and the political narrative here is as gripping as the intensely personal viewpoints of Bat's family, friends, and enemies. The portrait of Bat is unforgettable, a decent guy who somehow finds himself part of the corruption, almost by default.
Hazel RochmanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
