Snakepit A Novel

Praised on both sides of the Atlantic as well as in the author's native Uganda, Moses Isegawa's first novelAbyssinian Chronicleswas a "big, transcendently ambitious book" (Boston Globe) that "blasts open the tidy borders of the conventional novel and redraws the literary map to reveal a whole new world" (Elle). InSnakepit, Isegawa returns to the surreal, brutalizing landscapes of his homeland during the time of dictator Idi Amin, when interlocking webs of emotional cruelty kept tyrants gratified and servants cooperative, a land where no onenot husbands or wives, parents or loversis ever safe from the implacable desires of men in power. Men like General Bazooka, who rues the day he hired Cambridge-educated Bat Katanga as his "Bureaucrat Two"a mantoogood at his joband places in his midst (and his bed) a seductive operative named Victoria, whose mission and motives are anything but simple. Ambitious and acquisitive, more than a little arrogant, Katanga finds himself steadily boxed in by events spiraling madly out of control, where deception, extortion, and murder are just so many cards to be played.

Moses Isegawa was born in Uganda and worked as a history teacher before leaving for the Netherlands in 1990. He is the author of <i>Abyssinian Chronicles</i>. He lives in Amsterdam.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>