A "DUEL WITH A DICTATOR" is a memorable novel of corruption, brutality and a failed democratic order. It is a tale of a strong-willed African Woman, Paula Okappa, in a difficult, chaotic, but fictitious African country of Kerikta. It collates the political troubles, albeit in fiction, of Third World countries, particularly Africa's political scene after "Independence" from her colonial masters. Intense with detail about the working of opposing political actors, this is a potent story of intrigue, gross human rights abuses, and political violence within the tradition of African dictators. Emmanuel Acheta tells the story in fast- paced, and alluringly descriptive prose befitting an African setting that nurtured him.

The novel is set in post-colonial Uganda, where a fictional dictator has renamed the country, Republic of Kerikta. Thirty-five year-old Paula Okappah, the protagonist, begins her political journey almost unknowingly, when she joins the National Civic Awareness Organization-NACAO, as its research officer in-charge of public affairs. Her previous experience as a Guild President at the country's premier University, Makerere University, fuses with her strong-willed character in the new environment of National Civic Awareness Organization.

Sickening corruption, autocratic rule by the ruling Renaissance Party (RP) and mushrooming armed rebellions, suddenly turn NACAO into a political party, Party for Democratic Patriots-PDP. In a political ascent within PDP, Paula Okappah becomes its Secretary General, and quickly mobilizes other opposition parties for a vote of "no confidence" in the Keriktan President and from it, an early Presidential election.

The Keriktan dictator, President Junius Ike Wadhabo, adept at political survival fends off his potential political funeral by changing parts of the Keriktan Constitution like " bed sheets on a whore's bed," by freezing political rallies, and restricting local area consultations citing "Public Order and Security Concerns."

Under his prodding, Kerikta's security forces violently break up an "illegal" opposition rally organized at the nation's capital, Kerikta City. Paula runs, hides, even changes her identity, and varnishes in the bustling capital, Kerikta City. Who wouldn't? President Wadhabo's men from the dreaded Joint Security Force, torture and routinely kill the president's rivals by "administering electric shock, sinking them in River Nile, and hanging them upside down like a carcass of a bull."

For Paula Okappah, two more terrors raise the stakes; her alleged rebel links, and her shocking "Billion-dollar evidence about President Wadhabo and his top men."

In a spine-tingling escape against hatched up bogus charges on her head, she flees through a heavily guarded Kerikta /Kenyan border, dressed and veiled as Sister Immaculate Gonza.

Then a non-political misfortune changes the political calculus of a restive nation; in the churning and frigid waves of the sprawling Lake Victoria, the dictator dies in a tragic air disaster. Kerikta is in shock.

And with the next in succession under investigation for corruption, the de facto constitutional head of state is now the Chief Justice.

Justice Solomon Wabembe.

Stunned by fate and history, a hasty coalition of politicians and a dubious majority vote in Parliament reverses the fortunes of the hunted opposition politicians. The hunted become the hunters.

Paula Okappah, destiny's young woman, is suddenly Kerikta's Interim Prime Minister, a first ever-female Prime Minister in Kerikta and in Sub-Saharan Africa.

A DUEL WITH A DICTATOR is thus a compelling fictional account of Africa's rotten political scene. If you read and believe African stories of state-sponsored murder, unrestricted corruption, a muzzled media, almost crazy-like state agents, gross human rights abuses, silenced-opposition activists, sycophantic henchmen, wasteful,and opulent African Presidents with their Swiss-numbered accounts and accomplices, A DUEL WITH A DICTATOR may well be the narrative that shows it rather than tells it.

Its characters read like they were drawn from the turbulent times of Liberia, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Zaire (Democratic Republic of Congo), Nigeria, Central African Republic, Chile, Argentina, Romania, Philippines, Haiti, Iraq, and Burma (Myanmar)-Whose leading pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Emmanuel Acheta has dedicated the book.

It is an extremely intriguing trip of imagination, a remarkable piece of African political fiction. It is worth five years of its research!

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