Hailed as a masterwork of satire by some, and no doubt reviled by others, this work begins with the premise that God takes upon Himself a body human in appearance (if two miles long) and then dies and falls into the ocean near the bight of Africa. A disgraced supertanker captain is hired to tow God's body to a crypt carved out of an iceberg, while the Roman Catholic Church and a group of atheists fight one another to destroy the body, with its evidence of truths that they would prefer that the world not learn. (The atheists, that God existed in the first place, and the Catholics, that God has died.) To the extent that the book seriously deals with anything, it suggests that God is unnecessary.