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Idi Amin: The Story of Africa's Icon of Evil
The first serious full-length biography of modern Africa’s most famous dictator
“Sharply written, forensically researched. . . . A meticulous re-examination of Amin’s life, producing a narrative packed with original evidence, and one that strives at all times to be scrupulously well balanced. ”—Paul Kenyon, The Sunday Times, London
Idi Amin began his career in the British army in colonial Uganda, and worked his way up the ranks before seizing power in a British-backed coup in 1971. He built a violent and unstable dictatorship, ruthlessly eliminating perceived enemies and expelling Uganda’s Asian population as the country plunged into social and economic chaos.
In this powerful and provocative new account, Mark Leopold places Amin’s military background and close relationship with the British state at the heart of the story. He traces the interwoven development of Amin’s career and his popular image as an almost supernaturally evil monster, demonstrating the impossibility of fully distinguishing the truth from the many myths surrounding the dictator. Using an innovative biographical approach, Leopold reveals how Amin was, from birth, deeply rooted in the history of British colonial rule, how his rise was a legacy of imperialism, and how his monstrous image was created.
“Sharply written, forensically researched. . . . A meticulous re-examination of Amin’s life, producing a narrative packed with original evidence, and one that strives at all times to be scrupulously well balanced. ”—Paul Kenyon, The Sunday Times, London
Idi Amin began his career in the British army in colonial Uganda, and worked his way up the ranks before seizing power in a British-backed coup in 1971. He built a violent and unstable dictatorship, ruthlessly eliminating perceived enemies and expelling Uganda’s Asian population as the country plunged into social and economic chaos.
In this powerful and provocative new account, Mark Leopold places Amin’s military background and close relationship with the British state at the heart of the story. He traces the interwoven development of Amin’s career and his popular image as an almost supernaturally evil monster, demonstrating the impossibility of fully distinguishing the truth from the many myths surrounding the dictator. Using an innovative biographical approach, Leopold reveals how Amin was, from birth, deeply rooted in the history of British colonial rule, how his rise was a legacy of imperialism, and how his monstrous image was created.
320 pages, Hardcover
Published January 5, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
December 28, 2020
Easily my best book of 2020
September 16, 2023
This is a brilliant examination of why forty years after he fell from power and twenty since his death in exile Idi Amin Dada is probably the most recognisable, both in name and image, post-colonial African military strongman/dictator. It is a biography but because Idi Amin is as much a creation of the imaginations of everyone from British officials in London and diplomats in Kampala; people who opposed him and more importantly people who at one time supported him and then defected to the opposition it is as much an investigation into establishing 'truth'. So it is not a conventional biography because every apparent 'fact' about Amin is disputable and, the mass of books written about him are hopelessly compromised by cultural assumptions which, when looked are revealed as either dubious, unfounded or biased.
Let me be clear this book does exculpate, excuse, dismiss, deny or excuse any of the murderous acts Amin was directly or indirectly responsible for but he tries to place them within the larger context of Ugandan and African history both pre and post colonial; indeed the colonial heritage is at the root of most of Amin's life and Uganda's independent history.
It never ceases to amaze how the UK, and other colonial powers, manage to avoid responsibility for the grotesque failures of so many of the regimes and institutions they set up in their hasty departure from colonial entanglements on various continents. They might admit that some 'withdrawals' were precipitous and that events forced them to leave before enough 'locals' or 'natives' had been trained to assume posts of responsibility but they will never admit is that if they had had another thirty, forty or fifty years in power there would no doubt have been a similar deficiency in trained and educated local people to take over from colonial outsiders. To imagine otherwise is to misunderstand the nature of colonialism and empire - they did not exist for the colonial power to act as nursemaids to new political entities but as sources of economic and political power for the colonising power.
Most importantly the simplistic and prejudiced way that colonial civil servants and army officers read 'native' African cultures had long term disastrous affects - most clearly seen in their attitudes to so-called 'warrior races' or tribes who make good soldiers and others who might be supported if they could find a suitably 'feudal' set up with a local king/chief and 'aristocracy' or, despised if they were seen as 'mission' boys, educated Africans who were as despised ass their working class equivalents in the UK for not knowing their place.
The parallels with India and the regimentation of the very liminal and porous idea of 'caste' into something regimented and binding with the misunderstanding of 'tribes' in Africa is overwhelming, crude racist, cliched thinking became solidified into 'fact' which has carried on into the present.
The insights this book presents on Amin, post-colonial Africa, the underlying assumptions and prejudices of so many who would never think of themselves as such and the sheer oddity of public memory as to who is and who is not remembered as a 'monster' are fascinating (The years Amin was in power, 1971-1979 roughly correspond to my teenage years, and while the newspapers were full of Amin's 'crimes' I remember nothing negative, indeed nothing said at all, about his predecessor and eventual successor Milton Obote. He had already planned and announced the expulsion of Uganda's Asians before being toppled in Amin's military coup and once more in power proceeded to kill directly far more people then Amin did directly or indirectly. You will find Obote nowhere listed in any of the numerous popular books tv programmes about 'evil' dictators where Amin features so prominently). But as Amin's entire life has become shrouded in 'myth' Mark Leopold has, rightly, to spend a great deal of time exploring those myths and what foundation they have. This does not make for an easy narrative read. At times a great deal of sources, first and second hand, are quoted and analysed and, while accepting its necessity, I often found my attention flagging. But the result is fascinating and important because what we in the UK and USA made of Amin says more about our lack of understanding of Uganda and Africa than anything else.
Although it has longueurs this is one of the most important books published on Africa in recent years and a must read if you want to understand not simply Uganda but so much of what is happening now.
Let me be clear this book does exculpate, excuse, dismiss, deny or excuse any of the murderous acts Amin was directly or indirectly responsible for but he tries to place them within the larger context of Ugandan and African history both pre and post colonial; indeed the colonial heritage is at the root of most of Amin's life and Uganda's independent history.
It never ceases to amaze how the UK, and other colonial powers, manage to avoid responsibility for the grotesque failures of so many of the regimes and institutions they set up in their hasty departure from colonial entanglements on various continents. They might admit that some 'withdrawals' were precipitous and that events forced them to leave before enough 'locals' or 'natives' had been trained to assume posts of responsibility but they will never admit is that if they had had another thirty, forty or fifty years in power there would no doubt have been a similar deficiency in trained and educated local people to take over from colonial outsiders. To imagine otherwise is to misunderstand the nature of colonialism and empire - they did not exist for the colonial power to act as nursemaids to new political entities but as sources of economic and political power for the colonising power.
Most importantly the simplistic and prejudiced way that colonial civil servants and army officers read 'native' African cultures had long term disastrous affects - most clearly seen in their attitudes to so-called 'warrior races' or tribes who make good soldiers and others who might be supported if they could find a suitably 'feudal' set up with a local king/chief and 'aristocracy' or, despised if they were seen as 'mission' boys, educated Africans who were as despised ass their working class equivalents in the UK for not knowing their place.
The parallels with India and the regimentation of the very liminal and porous idea of 'caste' into something regimented and binding with the misunderstanding of 'tribes' in Africa is overwhelming, crude racist, cliched thinking became solidified into 'fact' which has carried on into the present.
The insights this book presents on Amin, post-colonial Africa, the underlying assumptions and prejudices of so many who would never think of themselves as such and the sheer oddity of public memory as to who is and who is not remembered as a 'monster' are fascinating (The years Amin was in power, 1971-1979 roughly correspond to my teenage years, and while the newspapers were full of Amin's 'crimes' I remember nothing negative, indeed nothing said at all, about his predecessor and eventual successor Milton Obote. He had already planned and announced the expulsion of Uganda's Asians before being toppled in Amin's military coup and once more in power proceeded to kill directly far more people then Amin did directly or indirectly. You will find Obote nowhere listed in any of the numerous popular books tv programmes about 'evil' dictators where Amin features so prominently). But as Amin's entire life has become shrouded in 'myth' Mark Leopold has, rightly, to spend a great deal of time exploring those myths and what foundation they have. This does not make for an easy narrative read. At times a great deal of sources, first and second hand, are quoted and analysed and, while accepting its necessity, I often found my attention flagging. But the result is fascinating and important because what we in the UK and USA made of Amin says more about our lack of understanding of Uganda and Africa than anything else.
Although it has longueurs this is one of the most important books published on Africa in recent years and a must read if you want to understand not simply Uganda but so much of what is happening now.
Read
May 7, 2025Where to start? The book is, as its title suggests, a biography of Idi Amin. Whether the name is familiar to you or not, may depend on your age. At least that is what I take away from my experience with the bookseller who sold me the book (in London). He told me he remembers how, during the 70s, Amin made the news often. In case, like me before reading this, you do not know who Idi Amin is: Amin was, for 8 years, the dictator of Uganda. His eccentric behaviour made him, especially in Britain, infamous and a whole array of different myths, from cannibalism to satanic rituals, sprung up around him. It becomes evident early on in the book, that there is not enough of reliable information on Amin to fill a 300-page biography. Leopold therefore chooses to tell us not only what little we do (somewhat reliably) know about Amin but also examines the myths and the prevalent picture of Amin in the minds of Westerners (and Ugandan intellectuals).
This book could well have been another sensationalistic book about all the supposed horrors that took place during Amin’s reign. But this isn’t that, the book is almost scientific with its many quotations and citations. Leopold goes through many of the myths, showing how Amin’s political contemporaries (e.g. in the UK or Israel) fell for his, at times ridiculous and seemingly buffonish, acts on the world stage, often through archival material. This doesn’t mean however, that it is boring; whilst it is certainly not an easy beach-read it makes for a kind of satisfying reading experience. I’m sure its impact would have been a lot bigger if I’d have known Amin beforehand, but that did not prove to lessen the enjoyment.
Whilst the book is about Amin, Leopold manages, through his methodology, to show more generally that things may not always be as black and white as they seem. In this example; whilst Amin certainly did not have many scruples, he most probably did not eat other humans nor was he “Africas Hitler”. In fact, his predecessor, Milton Obote, (also a dictator and, surprisingly, the president that got ousted through Amin’s coup) killed more people in a shorter time than Amin, still he is not the “icon of evil” Amin is today (sidenote: Obote did not fit into the “uneducated / hypermasculine / foolish African” image of the collective Western mind as well as Amin). If you did not catch the other big theme of the book yet; it is racism.
At the end of the book, Leopold sums Amin’s image up quite nicely himself: “Above all, Idi Amin was absolutely not, as he liked to present himself, a simple man, and nor was he stupid: he was, as I hope I have shown, a very complex character indeed.”
Before writing this I have read a Goodreads review of the book (3 stars, DNF) stating that the reader wanted “a better look into Idi Amin” and that the book is not clear. This reader missed one of the main points of this book and that is, that Leopold only rarely tells you exactly what he thinks on purpose (he states it in the introduction as well..). But through his presentation of the various writings on and about Amin, whereby a single event gets highlighted from various angles, you get to form your own picture (with Leopolds clever guidance of course). “A better look into Idi Amin” sadly is not possible, because there are so few reliable first-hand accounts. After reading this book your reaction should ideally be not to trust anyone who tries to give you a clear picture of Amin, but definitely not wanting a clearer and better look into Amin.
If your interested in reading a serious historical analysis, that may not be as sensational as the conventional biography on Amin, but more intelligent and satisfying you will do yourself a favour reading this book. It is well done and many of the points it rises and conclusions Leopold comes to, just as relevant as they were back in the 1970s.
This book could well have been another sensationalistic book about all the supposed horrors that took place during Amin’s reign. But this isn’t that, the book is almost scientific with its many quotations and citations. Leopold goes through many of the myths, showing how Amin’s political contemporaries (e.g. in the UK or Israel) fell for his, at times ridiculous and seemingly buffonish, acts on the world stage, often through archival material. This doesn’t mean however, that it is boring; whilst it is certainly not an easy beach-read it makes for a kind of satisfying reading experience. I’m sure its impact would have been a lot bigger if I’d have known Amin beforehand, but that did not prove to lessen the enjoyment.
Whilst the book is about Amin, Leopold manages, through his methodology, to show more generally that things may not always be as black and white as they seem. In this example; whilst Amin certainly did not have many scruples, he most probably did not eat other humans nor was he “Africas Hitler”. In fact, his predecessor, Milton Obote, (also a dictator and, surprisingly, the president that got ousted through Amin’s coup) killed more people in a shorter time than Amin, still he is not the “icon of evil” Amin is today (sidenote: Obote did not fit into the “uneducated / hypermasculine / foolish African” image of the collective Western mind as well as Amin). If you did not catch the other big theme of the book yet; it is racism.
At the end of the book, Leopold sums Amin’s image up quite nicely himself: “Above all, Idi Amin was absolutely not, as he liked to present himself, a simple man, and nor was he stupid: he was, as I hope I have shown, a very complex character indeed.”
Before writing this I have read a Goodreads review of the book (3 stars, DNF) stating that the reader wanted “a better look into Idi Amin” and that the book is not clear. This reader missed one of the main points of this book and that is, that Leopold only rarely tells you exactly what he thinks on purpose (he states it in the introduction as well..). But through his presentation of the various writings on and about Amin, whereby a single event gets highlighted from various angles, you get to form your own picture (with Leopolds clever guidance of course). “A better look into Idi Amin” sadly is not possible, because there are so few reliable first-hand accounts. After reading this book your reaction should ideally be not to trust anyone who tries to give you a clear picture of Amin, but definitely not wanting a clearer and better look into Amin.
If your interested in reading a serious historical analysis, that may not be as sensational as the conventional biography on Amin, but more intelligent and satisfying you will do yourself a favour reading this book. It is well done and many of the points it rises and conclusions Leopold comes to, just as relevant as they were back in the 1970s.
January 13, 2022
DID NOT FINISH (83% Completion)
This book really tore me apart. While the life and history of Idi Amin is quite a full and unique tale of myth meeting reality, Mark Leopold pushes the tale into quite a dull read that relies more on quotes and sources of the British rather than building on the events and times of Uganda in a open format. I tried to enjoy and finish this but it honestly brcame too much. If you wish to find a better look into Idi Amin Dada i recommend the Real Dictators Podcast which does this in a much clearer and more open focus (plus has input from the author Mark Leopold as well). Overall there are some great parts and i must admit well researched and unique insights. But these parts do not make the best whole. Cant give it anything higher than a 3 stars
This book really tore me apart. While the life and history of Idi Amin is quite a full and unique tale of myth meeting reality, Mark Leopold pushes the tale into quite a dull read that relies more on quotes and sources of the British rather than building on the events and times of Uganda in a open format. I tried to enjoy and finish this but it honestly brcame too much. If you wish to find a better look into Idi Amin Dada i recommend the Real Dictators Podcast which does this in a much clearer and more open focus (plus has input from the author Mark Leopold as well). Overall there are some great parts and i must admit well researched and unique insights. But these parts do not make the best whole. Cant give it anything higher than a 3 stars
January 5, 2022
Refreshingly Written! One of the most objective books I've read in awhile.
October 1, 2021
Excellent book but completely revisionist.
June 20, 2022
The title is a bit of clickbait but I found this to be a fair historigraphical approach to the legendary figure. I read during research before my first visit to Uganda, it is quite informative and makes for good conversation.
August 23, 2022
I normally struggle with biographies, and had never attempted a book length biography of Amin previously. Within the first few pages it becomes clear this one is going to be different from a typical biography and it holds true until the very end. I appreciated the regular interrogation of the accepted history of Amin to demonstrate that often what is passed down isn’t wholly supported by the facts, but over time and in particular sections it felt like too much and I would have liked more of a traditional history to establish the facts of the period.
Some reviews suggested it was revisionist and I don’t think that is true, but if this were the first time you were encountering such critical examination of the common sources of contemporary African history then it might seem a little strange to read that Amin wasn’t as crazy, monstrous, and “evil” as you might have been led to believe. In some places it did feel as if the attempts to untangle the myth and exaggeration from biased writers were somehow softening the facts around an objectively brutal regime, led by Amin.
Some reviews suggested it was revisionist and I don’t think that is true, but if this were the first time you were encountering such critical examination of the common sources of contemporary African history then it might seem a little strange to read that Amin wasn’t as crazy, monstrous, and “evil” as you might have been led to believe. In some places it did feel as if the attempts to untangle the myth and exaggeration from biased writers were somehow softening the facts around an objectively brutal regime, led by Amin.
April 24, 2022
Great book on one of the most talked-about and controversial Ugandans. The author left no stone unturned with his research and authoritatively pointed out what is to be believed and what isn't, seamlessly. Love the fact that he quoted so many books, movies, records from diplomatic missions and other places to make his arguments. Check a video review of it on YouTube, “All Books Ug”. Four stars because while he says Amin was at Sandhurst, the institute denies that and he did not clarify it. ✌️🏾
February 2, 2021
A very good history which situates Amin's life in the broader historical context of colonial and national Uganda, and grapples openly and productively with the complexity of the book's subject, and the limitations of source material.
December 21, 2022
Leopold consolidates all of the information available on Id Amin’s origins, life, and exploits. Through extensive research he is able to either support or discredit widely believed information about Amin, providing potentially one of the most accurate biographies about Amin.
September 4, 2023
This is more like a 3.5* rating overall. A good methodology for analyzing Amin, but will admit I was looking for some of the myths. Great read though about British post colonialism approaches in Uganda.
November 13, 2023
Takes an anthropological look at Amin. An interesting book. Oddly sympathetic in parts.
July 23, 2024
Turns out Idi Amin wasn't such an eccentric dictator, just a normal genocidal, ruthless, power hungry like many others throughout the world.
November 11, 2024
documents the rise and fall of amin, didnt paint him as a complete monster. Didnt have as much detail of Amin's deeds as i wanted.
February 10, 2025
A reasonably believable bio of Amin.
Strange how Amin is remembered as the African dictator and butcher when Apollo Milton Obote killed twice as many people.
Strange how Amin is remembered as the African dictator and butcher when Apollo Milton Obote killed twice as many people.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews