Reza Aslan's human history of God to Transworld

Transworld has acquired Iranian-American author Reza Aslan’s "most personal book yet": God, A Human History.

The book, due for publication on 7th November, will explore in prose and accessible scholarship the origin of religion, examining how our compulsion to make God in our own image has divided us for millennia to argue in favour of a "more universal spirituality".

World rights were sold to Random House by The Cheney Agency. Henry Vines, senior commissioning editor at Transworld, bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Denise Cronin at Random House US. Zahar is publishing in Brazil, and Bungeishunju in Japan.

Vines hailed it "a hugely important book" in which Aslan would apply "the same scholarship, and the same rich storytelling to the subject of God, forcing his readers to re-evaluate everything we think we know about the origins of religion and our relationship with the divine" as his previous books. 

Aslan is a scholar of religions and the author of three previous books, including most recently, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (The Westbourne Press), a number one New York Times bestseller. He is also a TV presenter and the host of spiritual adventure series "Believer" on CNN. The network last month halted production on a second series of the show as a result of anti-Trump tweets he had posted in wake of the president's "travel ban".