Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Grew Up… in a rural farming town in Uganda, with his mother’s family. During the 1930s, Uganda was very undeveloped and Western imperialism had sapped many of the resources they once had.
Profession… dictator of Uganda. He has overthrown Milton Obote in a military coup. Although he now believes he has conspirators lurking around every corner, Amin is the de facto leader of all of Uganda. He brings in Scottish physician Nicholas Garrigan to recreate the Ugandan health system, but Amin’s motives may be a bit less benevolent than Garrigan hopes.
Interests… Scotland, Scottish shirts, medicine, and power.
Relationship Status… married. Amin is a polygamist and has many wives, but he loves them all – for the children they bear and the love they give him in return.
Challenge… remaining in power. Many in Uganda seem to love him, even as he begins executing those who stand in his way. But Amin knows that there are some people, even in his own company, who would like to see him overthrown. And it doesn’t help that he has extreme paranoia about all of those around him. Amin seems to be taking the advice of Don Corleone from the Godfather: “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
Personality… paranoid, brutal, and charismatic. Perhaps the strangest thing about Amin is that he has such a fun-loving personality – but the moment you cross him he becomes a maniacal killer, unafraid of the moral consequences of murder. Amin is power-hungry, murderous, and never turns away from a challenge.
Get to Know him in...
-
Young Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan decides it's time for an adventure after he finishes his formal education, so he decides to try his luck in Uganda, and arrives during the downfall of President Obote. General Idi Amin comes to power and asks Garrigan to become his personal doctor.
-
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.
