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Inevitably he stays but the ambiguities that lie ahead prove Tolstoy’s maxim that great art does not end it merely stops at interesting

Inevitably, he stays, but the ambiguities that lie ahead prove Tolstoy’s maxim that great art does not end; it merely stops at interesting places.The research has clearly been painstaking, containing an acknowledgements page that verges on self-parody (“C E Williams of Panhandle Ground Water Conservation District No 3 … made useful comments on the agricultural use of the Ogalla aquifer”). In lesser hands, this book could have laboured beneath footnotes; but Proulx lends them such anecdotal ease that they become inseparable from the protagonists. She takes caricature and transforms it into chiaroscuro (“light” reading at its shadowy best), blends archetype with stereotype so that neither term quite fits, and juxtaposes simple story-telling with complex collage.This book’s intellectual heritage may well include Emerson’s essay on nature and, stylistically, she is indebted to the Nebraska novels of Willa Cather. That said, Annie Proulx’s voice remains uniquely her own – her vision as distinctively seductive as a Texan sunset..

FOR YEARS, the Italian journalist Riccardo Orizio carried two yellowing newspaper clippings in his wallet. Sometimes, he says, they fell out at inconvenient moments; at others, he took them out and re-read them, discovering that “they kept my spirits up”. One was about the former Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin Dada, the other referred to Jean-Bedel Bokassa, self-proclaimed emperor of the Central African Republic. He deliberately chose dictators whose careers ended in ignominy, on the grounds that “those who fall on their feet tend not to examine their own conscience”. Thus there is no Pinochet, nor any other familiar figure from Latin America, such as Galtieri of Argentina, Rios Montt of Guatemala or the notorious Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay.This is initially a disappointment, for many of us would love to see Pinochet subjected to a grilling. It is also, as it turns out, a mistaken premise, for with the exception of Jaruzelski, Orizio’s subjects could hardly be described as introspective, let alone penitent.On the contrary, they recall the verdict of Graham Greene – who set The Comedians in the Haiti of Baby Doc’s father, Papa Doc – on the infantile character Pinkie from his earlier novel, Brighton Rock.

“The outlaw of justice always keeps in his heart the sense of justice outraged – his crimes have an excuse and yet he is pursued by the Others,” Greene observed. “The Others have committed worse crimes and flourish.”Idi Amin, parading his Muslim credentials in Jeddah, explicitly denies feeling any remorse. Nexhmije Hoxha, who presided with her husband over one of the communist bloc’s most paranoid regimes, also has no regrets “I’m innocent They are mistaken. I wanted nothing but the well-being of my country.” Similarly, Jean-Claude Duvalier, recalling the night when, aged 19, he took over from his dead father: “The simple people of Haiti, the black peasants living in poverty, all needed someone to defend them They needed a new Papa Doc. I had been chosen by Destiny for that role.”Destiny, apparently, got it wrong, for Baby Doc now lives in exile in France, where he has found a new interest in solar panels. He has also traded in his first wife for a new companion with model good looks, Veronique Roi. Roi has never been to Haiti but talks about Baby Doc’s past with confidence.

The accusations made against him are “all lies”, naturally, and she has travelled as far as the border in order “to understand the tragic situation into which Haitians have fallen without the Duvaliers”.Self-delusion and the capacity to draw others into their fantasies are two of the most striking attributes shared by dictators. But sadly Orizio is not, on the evidence presented here, a consistently tough or challenging interrogator. His questions to Amin follow the Hello! formula of polite generalities – “What do you miss, Mr President?” – which made this reader wonder why he spent so much time and effort tracking down the former tyrant.Orizio’s summary of Amin’s career includes the undeniable assertion that “behind the carnival antics of ‘Big Daddy’ there was a reeking trail of blood”. One of the world’s more enduring mysteries is why the British government, which has an extradition treaty with Amin’s host, Saudi Arabia, has not tried to bring him to justice for the murder of thousands of British citizens in Uganda. He recounts the gruesome fate of Amin’s wife, Kay, whose arms and legs were cut off after her death – because she had had an abortion, according to Amin – and then sewn back, right to left and vice versa.Such anecdotes, and the ones told about Bokassa, make grim if familiar reading.