A Brief History of Seven Killings: A Novel
by Marlon James
Marlon James’s third novel tells the story of an attempted assassination of Bob Marley in 1970s Jamaica and its chaotic aftermath, as CIA agents flooded in from overseas and violence flowed well beyond the island’s shores. Michiko Kakutani, then of the New York Times, said it was “like a Tarantino remake of The Harder They Come but with a soundtrack by Bob Marley and a script by Oliver Stone and William Faulkner, with maybe a little creative boost from some primo ganja. It’s epic in every sense of that word: sweeping, mythic, over-the-top, colossal and dizzyingly complex.”
Recommendations from our site
“Set in Jamaica during the shockingly turbulent 1970s, Marlon James’s Booker Prize-winning book is about the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Bob Marley. In many ways this is too recent a time to even think about finding it a matter for wit or humour, and there is not a single joke in it, but the language is so inventive, and so unrepeatably bad that you can’t help laugh. I should say that I listened to the audio version of this, brilliantly read by an ensemble cast, and doing so will change your own way of thinking about everything for a couple of weeks thereafter.” Read more...
The Funniest Historical Novels
Toby Clements, Journalist
