What would it be like to become Idi Amin's personal physician! Giles Foden's bestselling thriller, set in Uganda during the surreal terror of Amin's brutal reign, now appears in paperback.

'The best novel to come out of Africa since Wole Soyinka's Ake. Giles Foden is a major new talent.' Redmond O'Hanlon
'As convincing and terrifying a portrait of a capricious tyrant as I have ever read. Foden captures with absolute fidelity the fascination of a figure like Amin: his low cunning, his charisma and physical presence, his deep intellectual confusion, his charm, his savagery, the amusingly childish inconsequentiality of his speeches, and his flashes of real insight into the motives of others ... No one who reads it will ever forget the repellent attraction of Idi Amin. Evening Standard
'Amin's personality emerges from this novel as extraordinarily vivid. An audacious, shrewd and spirited first novel.' William Boyd
'A horribly vivid portrait of a blasted land under the outrageous authority of a man who is at once genuinely ridiculous and genuinely terrifying...Giles Foden moves effortlessly through every register from farce to gruesome tragedy, transfiguring his depressing subject with energy and panache.' Times literary Supplement

It's the last week of December, a brooding time of year even for a hip, sardonic, New York cowboy/private eye. When an ex-Texas Jewboys guitarist comes to crash, Kinky's gloom turns to horror when his 'housepest' gets savagely murdered in the shower, a dismembered doll shows up in the mail and deadly accidents start befalling other members of the guerrilla country music band. Someone is killing the Jewboys. Kinky is on the trail, armed only with an attitude and a cigar.

'Friedman's novels read as if written ... by a Raymond Chandler high on prohibited substances.' Daily Telegraph