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In a dazzling display of masterful storytelling, Marlon James explores the extraordinary backstory to the attempted assassination of Bob Marley.
Jamaica, 1976. Seven gunmen storm Bob Marley’s house, machine guns blazing. The reggae superstar survives, but the gunmen are never caught. Marlon James investigates the story behind this near-mythical event. The result is a mesmerising, continent-crossing tale that spans three decades, with a shadowy cast of street kids, drug lords, journalists, prostitutes, gunmen and secret service agents.
About the Author
Marlon James is the author of the New York Times bestseller A Brief History of Seven Killings, The Book of Night Women, and John Crow's Devil.In December 1976, less than two weeks before a general election was to be held in Jamaica and just two days before Bob Marley was to play at a concert to ease political tensions in Kingston, the country’s capital, several gunmen stormed the singer’s house.
The attackers, armed with machine guns, wounded Marley, his wife and his manager, as well as several others. It is that shooting – and the lead up and aftermath of it for a cast of fictional characters – that James explores in A Brief History of Seven Killings.
Despite his enduring popularity, the attempted assassination of Marley is often overlooked, and James’ book is responsible for bringing knowledge of the event to a new audience.
For those who want to know more about the real events that James’ book is based on, reggae historian and archivist Roger Steffens’ book So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley offers an insight into the events of December 3, 1976. Read an extract from the book at Rolling Stone.
What has it been like to be longlisted?
Fantastic and surreal. My literary sensibilities have been shaped by Booker winners, shortlisters and longlisters from I was a kid studying literature on high school.
What are you working on next?
Something set in the 11th century.
What are you reading at the moment?
Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories.
What is your favourite Man Booker-winning novel?
The Line Of Beauty.
A Brief History of Seven Killings contains some 75 characters. What was your reasoning behind using such a crowd?
That’s just it, reason had to go out the window! I had to get the point where my inner critic stopped questioning my moves, because often I was moving without a second thought or even a first one. It was the riskiest thing I had ever done and reasoning had nothing to do with it.
‘I had three or four assistant researchers. For the historical details, it was about getting a bigger sense of the Cold War, CIA involvement, the minute-by-minute details of the assassination attempt. But a lot of the research was peripheral. It was stuff like ’70s slang. How people spoke. Which decade did people say “gnarly”? I was trying to build an entire universe, so the research would be far and wide. Everything from, like, if burning the bra was a movement, would my character be wearing a bra? I can’t have my character whip out Jif peanut butter if Jif peanut butter hadn’t been invented yet. I want to know if Paper Mate pens were around. That’s the type of stuff I research.’
Read the full interview here.
‘This book is startling in its range of voices and registers… It moves at a terrific pace and will come to be seen as a classic of our times.’
Emily Raboteau, Bookforum
‘Marlon James’s epic and dizzying third novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, is anything but brief and describes far more than seven killings […] Based on actual events, [it] delineates strategies of war in a world of men—gang lords, hit men, politicians, and CIA agents, to name just a few.’
Julian Lucas, The New York Review of Books
‘If A Brief History of Seven Killings can be said to have a main idea, it’s that nobody escapes, at least not entirely, from violence. Because violence isn’t an event, but a kind of potential—a force, like gravity, that lurks in every curve of space […] It has less in common with most recent literary fiction than it does with Breaking Bad and The Wire.’
Katharine A. Powers, The Minneapolis Star Tribune
‘Marlon James’ demanding, brilliantly executed third novel is based with extreme artistic license on the 1976 assassination attempt on Bob Marley […] In this novel — and surely in life — the planned assassination of ‘the Singer’ (the Bob Marley of this book) is only one element in the CIA’s effort to unseat the government of Prime Minister Michael Manley […] Put plainly, A Brief History of Seven Killings calls for a stout heart, strong stomach and prodigious powers of concentration, but the reader so equipped will be rewarded with an experience he or she will not soon forget. The novel makes no compromises, but is cruelly and consummately a work of art.’
Tyrone Beason, The Seattle Times
‘Marlon James’ epic novel about what he refers to as ‘post-post-colonial’ Jamaica is so thick with characters and voices that it induces feelings of disorientation similar to traveling to a foreign country for the first time […] Switching narrators at a furious pace, Marlon uses this incendiary backdrop to explore the lives of the colorful street criminals and gang lords who had a hand in the assassination attempt on Marley.’
Rosecrans Baldwin, NPR
‘Be prepared: it is a busy book. Characters include the would-be assassins, various gang bosses, journalists and CIA officers. There’s the ghost of a politician, and an even more ghostly Bob Marley himself […] A Brief History is, with dozens of characters and motives, impressively dizzying. Ultimately, it’s also a beautiful mess.’
The fiction writer in me likes gaps in stories because I can jump into that gap and try to suggest something.
On accepting the award, James paid tribute to the whole shortlist:
‘There are so many ways to tell, let’s call it, the English language novel. It’s so humbling and so wonderful that you fell in love with six wonderful, experimental, outrageous, dark, beautiful novels that I think, what we’re really just trying to do is make sense of the world we’re in. And I don’t think we’re ever going to find the answers but I also think as novelists we’re just here to ask better questions. So I will continue to do that.’
James’ book was chosen by the judging panel of Professor Michael Wood, Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, John Burnside, Sam Leith and Frances Osborne.