Haile Selassie, King of Kings, Elect of God, Lion of Judah, His Most Puissant Majesty and Distinguished Hishness the Emperor of Ethiopia, reigned from 1930 until he was overthrown by the army in 1974. While the fighting still raged, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Poland’s leading foreign correspondent, traveled to Ethiopia to seek out an interview Selassie servants and closet associates on how the Emperor had ruled and why he fell. This “sensitive, powerful… history” (The New York Review of Books) is Kapuscinski’s rendition of their accounts – harmorous, frightening, sad, grotsque – of a man living amidst nearly unimaginable pomp and luxury while his people teetered between hunger and starvation.