Snakepit (review)

Welcome to Uganda, a beautiful, troubled land whose troubles outweigh her beauties. One departing wisehead calls her "a mad woman of untold beauty," adding, "efforts to save her were bound to be doomed." No quarrels. Ugandan shops are robbed routinely; lynchings and shootings of political rivals occur at all hours; judges are either deported or simply killed.

Overseeing this butchery is that addict of witchcraft and cocaine, Marshal Amin Dada, aka Idi Amin. Oblivious to the worth of peace and stability, the Marshal has put together no economic recovery program. Still worse, this vindictive buffoon will jeopardize the national interest to settle a private grudge.

His is the snakepit that Moses Isegawa's Bat Katanga re-enters after completing a postgraduate degree in math at Cambridge University. He's glad to be home. Because Uganda needs expertise like his, Bat makes quick strides in her Ministry of Power and Communication. Everything is working in his favor. Yes, he likes the prestige and money his job brings him. But this conscientious public servant also enjoys keeping his countrymen's telephones, electricity, and mail service running smoothly.

His joy ends quickly. The construction gear he buys from Saudi Arabia doesn't help build homes, hospitals, or schools for Uganda's poor but, instead, finances hangars for newly obtained warplanes. Moreover, his chief, one General Bazooka, assigns a young beauty to spy on him. No useful information comes forth. The upper-class beauty Victoria comes to view Bat as her redeemer and deliverer. Her euphoria is short lived. Not only does Bat tell her to abort the baby she's carrying; he also announces that he has fallen in love with another woman.

These sudden reversals bespeak a busy, highly plotted novel. Rebellions flare out and gutter; political loyalties shift; family traditions long in place sink under the weight of political change. What's more, these developments break in an atmosphere of mounting danger, the dwindling of the government's exchequer matched by its leader's growing dependence upon whisky and his magic white powder.

The force exerted by the desperate Marshal reflects Isegawa's insight into power – both its nature and its deployment. "Sex, like food, was not asked for but demanded" by those in charge, we're reminded. The mighty had better pig out while they can in steamy, volatile Uganda. Spikes in trade deficits, foreign debts, and inflation have created so much anxiety that the paranoid Marshal could scapegoat one of his top aides in a heartbeat.

As anxieties mount, Isegawa's vivid, energized prose focuses our interest. Motifs develop surehandedly. Setting is realized quickly, New York emerging as an "aggressive thrust of . . . buildings, the dire extremity of a crowded skyline" that counterpoints the slouching jungle menace of Uganda.

Isegawa handles contrast well throughout; a bloodthirsty warlord reveals a tender, vulnerable side when he discovers that his wife is in danger. Contrast also promotes psychological realism in Snakepit, Isegawa's straitened people often seized by conflicting impulses at the same fraught moment. After languishing in jail for six months, a man greets his wife with "feelings of love laced with guilt, desire, relief."

Snakepit lacks the mass and heft of Isegawa's novelistic debut, Abyssinian Chronicles (2000), which is nearly twice its length. On the other hand, it's tighter, trimmer, and better built than its predecessor, its plot lines joining neatly and convincingly. This diverting, absorbing read, finally, makes us wonder where Isegawa's creative genius will take him next.