Haile Selassie is one of the most bizarre and misunderstood figures of 20th-century history, alternately worshipped and mocked, idolised and marginalised. This magni - cent biography by the German-Ethiopian historian Asfa-Wossen Asserate, is diligently researched and fair-minded with Selassie being accordedthe level of dignity he deserves. The book is manifestly a riposte to Ryszard Kapuscinski’s The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat, which portrayed the emperor, and indeed Addis Ababa’s entire Amharic elite, as a comic-opera laughing stock.