Snakepit

Snakepit by Moses Isegawa Knopf, March 2004 $24.00, ISBN 0-375-41454-1

This is an unsettling, fictionalized account of life in Uganda during the dictatorship of Idi Amin based on actual events.

Bat Katanga, a Ugandan native, returns to his homeland in the 1970s after graduating with an advanced math degree from Cambridge University. The exacting descriptions in the book often distract from the tale of Bat's personal conflicts, and most of the novel reads like a nonfiction account of atrocities during Amin's rule.

[Author Affiliation]

-Reviewed by Melissa Ewey Johnson Melissa Ewey Johnson is a writer in New York City.