A Brief History of Seven Killings

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 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, one-night stands, drug lords, girlfriends, gunmen, journalists, 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.

Winner of Man Booker Prize 2015

'James has triumphed in capturing the tension, the politics, the heat, chaos, beauty and music of Jamaica.' Financial Times

'Vast and vastly ambitious... much to admire... fascinating... the author's imaginative and stylistic range are impressive.' The Sunday Times

'“Brief”? For a work spanning nearly 700 pages, that word is, at best, a winky misdirection. To skip even a paragraph, though, would be to forgo the vertiginous pleasures of James’s semi-historical novel.' New York Times, '100 Best Books of the 21st Century'

‘Vast and teeming … A vivid novel that deserves all the praise it has received.’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Breaks new ground… A very fluid and superbly controlled work.’ Spectator

'The ambition is huge, but [James] pulls it off with huge style, confidence, imagination and wit... Extraordinary.' The Times

‘The hottest name in Caribbean literature right now.’ GQ, 'Best Books of 2014'

'When reading reviews of Night Women, James apparently became bored with comparisons to Toni Morrison; and with A Brief History, he’s got bored with comparisons to Quentin Tarantino. But it is hard not to see the strength of that comparison.' Guardian

'Epic in every sense of that word: sweeping, mythic, over-the-top, colossal and dizzyingly complex... A testament to Mr. James’s vaulting ambition and prodigious talent.' New York Times

'James’ intoxicating prose is relentless, feverishly up-close inside his characters’ rattled nerves even as the narrative scope widens into an evocative portrait of the author’s native Kingston.' Entertainment Weekly, 'Ten Best Fiction Books of the Decade'

‘Not only persuasive, but tragic, though in its polyphony and scope it’s more than that... Comic, surreal, nightmarish, parodic.’ New York Times Book Review

Marlon James was born in Jamaica. He is the author of John Crow’s Devil (Oneworld, 2015), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and The Book of Night Women (Oneworld, 2009), which won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Minnesota Book Award and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction. His third novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings (Oneworld 2014), won the Man Booker Prize in 2015, the American Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Fiction Prize, and was a finalist for the International Dublin Literary Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His short fiction and non-fiction has appeared in Esquire and Granta. He is currently the Writer-in-Residence and Associate Professor of English at Macalester College, Minnesota, USA.

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