Brief History of Seven Killings

*WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2015*A Book of the Decade, 2010-2020 (Independent)JAMAICA, 1976Seven gunmen storm Bob Marley’s house, machine guns blazing. The reggae superstar survives, but the gunmen are never caught.From the acclaimed author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf and The Book of Night Women comes a dazzling display of masterful storytelling exploring this near-mythic event. Spanning three decades and crossing continents, A Brief History of Seven Killings chronicles the lives of a host of unforgettable characters – slum kids, drug lords, journalists, prostitutes, gunmen and even the CIA. 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.

'Epic in every sense of that word: sweeping, mythic, over-the-top, colossal and dizzyingly complex.', 'A truly remarkable novel, crammed with a multitude of narrative voices, leaping across continents, reeking of sweat and gunpowder, slick with blood…As bold as literature can be'., 'Violent, lurid, scabrous, hilarious and beautiful, this novel teems with life, death and narrators. A deserving winner of...the Man Booker prize by the first Jamaican to carry off the award'., 'A vast, ambitious, burning mansion of a book, designed to reflect all the languages of its teeming island and the chambers of the human heart', ‘Showcases the extraordinary capabilities of a writer whose importance can scarcely be questioned.’ 

MARLON JAMES was born in Jamaica. He is the author of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings (Oneworld 2014), which also won the American Book Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Fiction Prize, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and featured in over twenty best books of the year lists. His debut novel, John Crow’s Devil (Oneworld, 2015), was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and 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. Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Hamish Hamilton) was published in 2019. He teaches at Macalester College, Minnesota, USA.