2007 books

14) Susan Hillmore, Malaria, 2000
Whereas humanity is often described as a cancer on the planet, Susan Hillmore seems to prefer the analogy of a fever in this not-quite-post-modern descendant of Paradise Lost. One of the world's last surviving baby elephants is separated from its mother and taken to London Zoo as a self-serving political gift from the once-lush fictional island of Mannar, as it collapses into anarchy. The plight of the elephants is symbolic of the all-encompassing decay that seems to grip all characters – arrogant colonials or put-upon locals – all inadequate people, and, it must be said, inadequately sketched-out. Malaria is also only half the story it could have been if it were given a more specific sense of time and place: it has all the feel of being set in a fictional African nation though it is only through the scantest of details that its Asian location later becomes apparent. This was a distraction too far for me, and the dysfunctional setting of this rather uneven story somehow reminds me more of J.G. Ballard than John Brunner, though it really ought to be the other way round.

2007 books

15) Giles Foden, The Last King of Scotland, 1998
A book I wanted to read before seeing the film. By the end of his eight-year rule in 1979 Amin was established in the British media as both a perplexingly charismatic figure of ridicule, and an inept and dangerous dictator with the blood of half a million Ugandans on his hands. Out of necessity Foden first had to focus on what made Amin so personable and hypnotic a character, after which he gradually takes the reader across a very distinct line into Amin's dark side as his personal physician Nicholas Garrigan learns the truth (the hard way) about Amin's excesses and abuses. I suspect the truth of the real Amin's relationship with those he employed was probably somewhat different as he was both intimidated and threatened when surrounded by people of greater intellect than himself, though at the same time he was scarcely able to exercise restraint when keeping a personal stranglehold on power. Foden has also threaded his story around real events by weaving in several fictional news cuttings amongst the facts and maybe has added too much sparkle to Amin's character, but for the most part it's convincing, often drawing as much on the Ugandan landscape as on Amin himself, and the result is a rather engagingly audacious read. I expect even Amin himself would have approved.