De turtle o' Hades

Like every African dictator, he was confusion's masterpiece - The Telegraph (August 2003). 'De turtle o' Hades' is a political parable. As an irreverent and playful re-writing of the past, it offers an alternative 'his story' of a brutal dictator of the twentieth century: Idi Amin. The narrative is a parody that plays with the iconic figure of Idi, and ushers the tortoise as a symbol of wisdom in African folklore; in this story its cousin the turtle serves as a transcontinental figure of eternal justice and trickery, a personification as in Brer Terrapin in Uncle Remus stories, the symbol of cunning. The work is partially set in a Southern US aesthetic of bayous and hurricanes, and emerges from collaborative practice between culturally diverse authors.