Background
Giles Foden was born in Warwickshire in 1967.
(In a twist of fate, a Scottish doctor on a Ugandan medica...)
In a twist of fate, a Scottish doctor on a Ugandan medical mission becomes irreversibly entangled with one of the world's most barbaric figures: Idi Amin. Impressed by Dr. Garrigan's brazen attitude in a moment of crisis, Amin hand picks him as his personal physician and closest confidante.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1408263920/?tag=2022091-20
(At the start of World War One, German warships controlled...)
At the start of World War One, German warships controlled Lake Tanganyika in Central Africa. The British had no naval craft at all upon 'Tanganjikasee', as the Germans called it. This mattered: it was the longest lake in the world and of great strategic advantage. In June 1915, a force of 28 men was despatched from Britain on a vast journey. Their orders were to take control of the lake. To reach it, they had to haul two motorboats with the unlikely names of Mimi and Toutou through the wilds of the Congo. The 28 were a strange bunch -- one was addicted to Worcester sauce, another was a former racing driver -- but the strangest of all of them was their skirt-wearing, tattoo-covered commander, Geoffrey Spicer-Simson. Whatever it took, even if it meant becoming the god of a local tribe, he was determined to cover himself in glory. But the Germans had a surprise in store for Spicer-Simson, in the shape of their secret 'supership' the Graf von Gotzen . . . Unearthing new German and African records, the prize-winning author of The Last King of Scotland retells this most unlikely of true-life tales with his customary narrative energy and style. Fitzcarraldo meets Heart of Darkness, this is rich, vivid and flashmanesque in its appeal - military history at its most absorbing and entertaining
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0141009845/?tag=2022091-20
Giles Foden was born in Warwickshire in 1967.
He was educated at Yarlet Hall and Malvern College boarding schools, then at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he read English, and at Street John"s College, Cambridge.
His family moved to Malawi in 1971, where he was raised. He worked as a journalist for Media Week magazine, then became an assistant editor on the Times Literary Supplement. He was deputy literary editor of The Guardian between 1995 and 2006 and is currently Fellow in Creative and Performing Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London.
He is a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, and still contributes regularly to The Guardian and other journals.
His first novel The Last King of Scotland (1998), is set during Idi Amin"s rule of Uganda in the 1970s. The 2006 feature film, The Last King of Scotland starring Forest Whitaker, is based on Foden"s novel with considerable differences, and Foden himself makes a brief cameo as a journalist at one of Amin"s press conferences.
His second novel, Ladysmith (1999), is set during the Anglo-Boer War in 1899 and tells the story of a young woman, Bella Kiernan, who becomes caught up in the Siege of Ladysmith. The book was inspired by letters written by Foden"s great-grandfather, Arthur Foden, a British soldier in the Imperial Yeomanry in South Africa during the conflict.
Giles Foden edited The Guardian Century (1999), a collection of the best reportage and feature-writing published in the newspaper during the twentieth century, and he contributed a short story to The Weekenders: Travels in the Heart of Africa, a collection of short fiction set in Africa by various contemporary writers.
Zanzibar (2002), is set in east Africa and explores the events surrounding the bombings of American embassies in 1998. Mimi and Toutou Go Forth: The Bizarre Battle for Lake Tanganyika, was published in 2004. In 2009, he donated the short story (One Last) Throw of the Dice to Oxfam"s "Ox-Tales" project, four collections of United Kingdom stories written by 38 authors.
Foden"s story was published in the "Water" collection.
His latest book Turbulence is a novel on military interest in meteorology in the Second World War. His brother-in-law is the politician, academic and media historian Tristram Hunt.
1998: James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction) (shortlist) The Last King of Scotland.
(In a twist of fate, a Scottish doctor on a Ugandan medica...)
(At the start of World War One, German warships controlled...)