When former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin died last year, he'd spent his last two decades in luxurious exile. Characterized by public displays of cruelty, intense tribalism, and profound egomania, Amin's '70s rule may best be summed up by the number of people dead at his command: The most conservative estimates place it at 100,000, while others put it as high as 500,000. From comfort in Libya, Iraq, and finally Saudi Arabia, Amin dreamed of returning to power to make good on the claims he made with such self-proclaimed titles as "President For Life" and "Conqueror Of The British Empire." In the end, he wasn't even allowed to return to die.
Amin's rule was an instance of functional madness taking the place of institutional weakness. Snakepit, the new novel from Abyssinian Chronicles author Moses Isegawa, plunges directly into the insanity, following recent Cambridge grad Bat Katanga as he returns to his native land to make his fortune. He meets his goal easily enough—perhaps too easily. A man of talent and intelligence, Bat is immediately treated as a valuable commodity by one of the generals enforcing Amin's will. He's almost as immediately treated as an object of suspicion.
Isegawa portrays Amin's government as an organization in which only fear checks ambition, even while never getting in the way of profit. When Bat is asked to choose between two Saudi princes competing for a business, he finds the choice made for him when one of the competitors seals the deal with both a hefty bribe and a none-too-vague threat. It's a moment of black comedy grounded in real horror, and typical of the mood Isegawa uses to float the novel.
Episodic to a fault, Snakepit never finds a narrative thrust. The wishy-washy Bat is continually overwhelmed by the forceful personalities around him, and Isegawa never stays in one place for long. But wherever he directs his focus, he brings powerfully rueful, unsparing observational skills. His characters tend to fall into two categories: the cruel and the victimized. Few of them stay in one category for long, but in the end, they all wind up "on the back of a mad bull, holding on for as long as possible." Whether they're trampled or thrown, their rides never last long. The destruction the bull leaves behind, however, is another story.