A provocative history of race, empire and myth, told through the stories of men who have been worshipped as gods - from Columbus to Prince Philip

A provocative history of race, empire and myth, told through the stories of men who have been worshipped as gods - from Columbus to Prince Philip. Spanning the globe and five centuries, Accidental Gods introduces us to a new pantheon: of man-gods, deified politicians and imperialists, militants, mystics and explorers. From the conquistadors setting foot in the New World to Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, elevated by a National Geographic article from emperor to messiah for the Rastafari faith, to the unlikely officers hailed as gods during the British Raj, this endlessly curious and revelatory account chronicles an impulse towards deification that persists even in a secular age, as show of defiance or assertion of power. In her bravura final part, Subin traces the colonial desire for divinity through to the creation of 'race' and the white power movement today, and argues that it is time we rid ourselves of the white gods among us.

"The best new non-fiction book I read this year... A stylish, playfully rigorous intellectual performance worthy of Marina Warner or Roberto Calasso" - Irish Times

"Anna Della Subin has lit upon a startling strand in the history of the sacred... The book's strength lies in the sensitivity of her analysis, which homes in on the inter-relations of power and powerlessness, colonialism and nationalism: worship as a response to terror, and a desire to propitiate" - TLS

"Phenomenal - erudite, provocative, scandalous, and comic and tragic by turns" - Sunday Times

"A fascinating slice of history" - The Times

"Accidental Gods is a playful, ironic and ambiguous book about religion, at a time when religion - outside of Dealey Plaza - has grown as solemn as an owl ... [it] leaves us hankering, like QAnon's unlovely faithful, for a wider, wilder pantheon" - Telegraph

"A fascinating tour through the endless diversity of the divine..." - Spectator

"Engaging" - The Times

"A beautifully written, subtly crafted history... [An] inspiring book" - TLS

"Fascinating... thoughtful and subtle" - The Irish Times

"A subversive history" - Guardian

"Remarkable... exceptional..." - Literary Review

"[Subin writes] with a poise and lucidity that allow full play to the comic aspects of her subject, while considering the frequently disastrous consequences..." - London Review of Books

"Inventive... Subinexpertly brings out the nuance and ambivalence of deification" - New Statesman

"So eloquently portrayed... With her sense of the uncanny, the ironic, the profane and the weird, Subin is a charming guide... What Subin helps us to see is that at the very core of modernity lies the white god, sweating in his pith helmet" - New Humanist