Sanderson holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in fiction writing and is an independent writer who has lived in Africa. In this essay, Sanderson examines Nicholas Garrigan's attempts to cut himself off from the events and people around him in The Last King of Scotland.

In Giles Foden's novel The Last King of Scotland, Nicholas Garrigan is a man feverishly contradicting British poet John Donne's often quoted line, "no man is an island entire of itself." Garrigan is an isolated man with few close friends and little contact with his family. Many of his attempts to reach out to another person are either ill-timed or ill-advised, especially his relationship with Idi Amin, the ruthless but childlike dictator of Uganda. Death is all around Garrigan, yet he refuses to believe this, building a wall between himself and reality.

While Garrigan does not openly say that he seeks...