Book Club Guide

American Gods

by Neil Gaiman · 2001 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

Old beliefs in a new world
What America does to identity and myth
The gods we create and then abandon

About this book

Shadow Moon, recently released from prison, takes a job with the mysterious Mr Wednesday and finds himself at the centre of a war between the old gods brought to America by immigrants — Anansi, Odin, Anansi, Czernobog — and the new gods of media, technology and globalisation. Gaiman's novel is a myth of America as a land that forgets its gods.

Published in 2001, American Gods won the Hugo, Nebula and Bram Stoker Awards and has been adapted for television. Gaiman wrote it during a period of living in the American Midwest.

Discussion questions

The premise is that gods exist because people believe in them and diminish when belief fades. What does this say about the relationship between faith, culture and power?
Shadow is a deliberately passive protagonist — things happen to him, and he observes. What does this narrative choice allow Gaiman to do, and how does it affect your engagement with him?
The new gods — of television, the internet, the road — are presented as hollow and aggressive. Is Gaiman romanticising the old gods, or is he asking a more complicated question about what we worship?
America is the novel's true subject. What does Gaiman — a British writer — see in America that an American writer might not?
The novel includes standalone 'Coming to America' stories about how various gods arrived. How do these digressions function — as enrichment, distraction, or something structural?