The Teeth May Smile but the Heart Does Not Forget

May 4, 2009
Pushcart Prize–winning journalist Rice captures the horrors of Idi Amin's eight-year reign of terror over Uganda. At the core of the book is an unsolved disappearance: Eliphaz Laki, a local leader with ties to the anti-Amin opposition, vanished in the early days of the Amin regime. When his son, Duncan, uncovered a clue to his father's disappearance 30 years later, the investigation eventually implicated Amin's second-in-command, Maj. Gen. Yusuf Gowon. With Amin living out his years safely in Saudi Arabia, the trial of Gowon forced Uganda to confront its brutal past. Treating the Lakis' story as a microcosm of Uganda's own, the author weaves together the family's search for truth and justice with Uganda's history. From its intimate portrait of Eliphaz's grieving family to the wide-angle perspectives of the tumultuous postindependence years as Ugandans struggled to knit together a nation from the ethnically, linguistically and religiously diverse peoples within their colonial borders, the book recasts a familiar history in an entirely new light. Photos.