“Simon Simonse’s Kings of Disaster is a monumental achievement. I
believe it is the most important work on the long-mooted topic of divine
kingship yet written, a book that brings the questions debated since
the time of Sir James Frazer and Evans-Pritchard to a final,definitive
resolution: everything from “did Africans really kill their sacred
kings?” to “what is the real nature of the principle of sovereignty that
still lies behind the bureaucratic forms of the modern nation-state?”
The answers are never quite what we expected. If there is such a thing
as progress in anthropology, and not just shifting fashion, then this
book must stand as the starting-point for any future discussion on these
topics.”
