LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
A special hardback edition of the 2015 Man Booker Winner.
Set against the backdrop of 1970s reggae culture, disco, sex and excess comes this remarkable re-imagining of the attempted assassination of Bob Marley. Gripping and inventive, ambitious and mesmerising, A Brief History of Seven Killings is one of the most remarkable and extraordinary novels of the twenty-first century.
Michael Wood, Chair of the Man Booker judges, commented: ‘This book is startling in its range of voices and registers, running from the patois of the street posse to The Book of Revelation. It is a representation of political times and places, from the CIA intervention in Jamaica to the early years of crack gangs in New York and Miami.
‘It is a crime novel that moves beyond the world of crime and takes us deep into a recent history we know far too little about. It moves at a terrific pace and will come to be seen as a classic of our times.’
Click here to see John Crow's Devil by the same author.
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A Brief History of Seven Killings Synopsis
Winner of the Booker Prize
One of the New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
One of Entertainment Weekly's Top 10 Books of the Decade
One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
A "thrilling, ambitious . . . intense" (Los Angeles Times) novel that explores the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in the late 1970s, from the author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf
In A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James combines brilliant storytelling with his unrivaled skills of characterization and meticulous eye for detail to forge an enthralling novel of dazzling ambition and scope.
On December 3, 1976, just before the Jamaican general election and two days before Bob Marley was to play the Smile Jamaica Concert to ease political tensions in Kingston, seven gunmen stormed the singer's house, machine guns blazing. The attack wounded Marley, his wife, and his manager, and injured several others. Little was officially released about the gunmen, but much has been whispered, gossiped and sung about in the streets of West Kingston. Rumors abound regarding the assassins' fates, and there are suspicions that the attack was politically motivated.
A Brief History of Seven Killings delves deep into that dangerous and unstable time in Jamaica's history and beyond. James deftly chronicles the lives of a host of unforgettable characters - gunmen, drug dealers, one-night stands, CIA agents, even ghosts - over the course of thirty years as they roam the streets of 1970s Kingston, dominate the crack houses of 1980s New York, and ultimately reemerge into the radically altered Jamaica of the 1990s. Along the way, they learn that evil does indeed cast long shadows, that justice and retribution are inextricably linked, and that no one can truly escape his fate.
Gripping and inventive, shocking and irresistible, A Brief History of Seven Killings is a mesmerizing modern classic of power, mystery, and insight.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781594633942 |
| Publication date: |
8th September 2015 |
| Author: |
Marlon James |
| Publisher: |
Riverhead Books an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
704 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Modern and Contemporary Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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Press Reviews
Marlon James Press Reviews
'A vivid plunge into a crazed, violent and corrupt world... executed with swaggering aplomb'
Irvine Welsh
'Scary and lyrically beautiful - you'll want to read whole pages aloud to strangers.'
Russell Banks
'A brilliant novel'
Library Journal
'Marlon James's writing can be at once at once punchy and lyrical; can alternate strange, dreamy poetry with visceral action; and can bring persuasive life to a kaleidoscopic range of characters. [This book] showcases the extraordinary capabilities of a writer whose importance can scarcely be questioned'
Independent
'Not only persuasive, but tragic, though in its polyphony and scope it's more than that ... the book's increasing sense of absurdity, its pop culture references, its compulsive ventriloquism and its range of tones - comic, surreal, nightmarish, parodic - began to remind me uncannily of David Foster Wallace's all-or-nothing Infinite Jest.'
New York Times Book Review
'It's 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...epic in every sense of that word: sweeping, mythic, over-the-top, colossal and dizzyingly complex.'
New York Times
'Critics rave about James' mastery of both oral history storytelling and patois dialect, and his ability to craft and juggle perspectives that often contradict and obscure the truth. With comparisons to the works of David Foster Wallace and Quentin Tarantino, James has garnered the highest of contemporary praise'.' Wired 10 Best Books of 2014
'resembles James Ellroy's LA Quartet in its blistering violence, multiple voices and view of history from the gutter to the star '
The Daily Telegraph
'[James's] talent has grown from book to book, and his imagination consistently shines a light on dark and gory places...this is a work that explores the aesthetics of cacophony and also the aesthetics of violence.'
Guardian
'This tense and violent, but very compelling, novel is a big book in more ways than one.'
The Herald
Author
About Marlon James
Marlon James was born in Kingston, Jamaica. John Crow’s Devil is his debut novel, published in North America in 2005 to widespread acclaim. It was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. His second novel, The Book of Night Women (Oneworld 2009), won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Minnesota Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His third novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings (Oneworld 2014) won the American Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Fiction Prize, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and featured in over twenty best books of the year lists. His short fiction and non-fiction has appeared in Esquire and Granta. He teaches at Macalester College, Minnesota, USA.
Author photo © Jeffrey Skemp
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