The Men Who Would Be King

The Men Who Would Be King tells the stories of men from the West who go to Vanuatu claiming/believing they are the fulfilment of a prophecy on the islands that says a divine man will come from overseas. These tales are as wily as any fiction; a claimant to a tropical throne living in exile in Nice, an American filmmaker wandering between villages handing out necklaces of his own face. This book asks why the old explorers dream about deified white men has endured in the Western imagination, through films and literature, and examines the long shadow it casts into our own time.