Books by Marlon James
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."
Moon Witch, Spider King: The Dark Star Trilogy, Book 2
by Marlon James
We loved the delirious mashup that was this Booker prizewinner’s first foray into fantasy, Black Leopard, Red Wolf. So it’s with great delight that we dove into the second book of the Dark Star trilogy, set in an imaginary Iron Age Africa replete with wondrous hallucination and historic reference. Here, James returns to the story of Black Leopard, Red Wolf from another perspective. The protagonist here is Sogolon the Moon Witch herself, an adversary to Tracker, the hero of the first instalment, and a woman. The narrative arc unfolds an almost ideological showdown between two different visions of empire, as Sogolon tells her story of a century of blood feud with the powerful Aesi, the chancellor to the king. A heady witch’s brew.
“It’s a bit like Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel, or Don Quixote… It’s one of those trips where people see a whole bunch of incredibly bizarre things one after another. If you don’t like that kind of thing, you’re not going to like this either, because it’s relatively light on the narrative.” Read more...
Alex Pheby, Novelist
Interviews where books by Marlon James were recommended
The Best Dark Fantasy Books, recommended by Alex Pheby
Dark fantasy undermines certainty and reality – but that’s exactly what we need, argues author and academic Alex Pheby. He talks us through his five favourites, and how they allegorize loss of innocence, question the real, and re-awaken our awareness of the human condition.
Best Books by Black Queer Writers, recommended by Robert Jones Jr.
The novels of James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Wallace Thurman and James Early Hardy bring the America of the last two centuries vividly to life. Marlon James brings us a fantasy trilogy set in ancient Africa. Robert Jones Jr., author of The Prophets—a love story set on a plantation in the American South—talks us through his choices of the best books by Black queer writers.
The Best Fantasy Books of 2022
While in 2022 the escapist impulse remains strong, there is more than solace to find in the pages of the best fantasy books. As Lloyd Alexander has said, “Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality – it’s a way of understanding it.” However you like your fantasy—epic or short, high or low, dark or comic, contemporary or historical—it’s a great time to be an avid reader in the realms of the imagination. Let’s hear it for unreality as a route to the real!
The Funniest Historical Novels, recommended by Toby Clements
Historical fiction, as a genre, is not known for its laugh-a-minute qualities. But that’s not to say there isn’t space for humour, when the events of the past have so often been surreal, ironic, or downright disastrous. Toby Clements, whose new novel A Good Deliverance takes the form of a 15th-century prison confession, recommends five of the funniest historical novels.
Booker Prize-Winning Novels
The winner of the 2024 Booker Prize was Orbital, by Samantha Harvey, the first novel to win the prize that’s set in space. Below, our list of all the Booker Prize-winning novels of the last twenty years.
