Marlon James interview: 'I used my prize money to buy a lamp that’s actually a life-sized horse'

JW: What happened over the next few days and weeks after you’ve won the Booker? 

MJ: It’s pretty much madness. The interviews start from around 6am. They don’t really stop until around 9pm. There’s a hilarious video of me on, I think, Channel Four’s news programme. Nobody can understand what I’m saying because I’ve totally lost my voice. 

JH: I’m really interested to know, especially several years on, whether winning a prize that big changed your writing practice or your writing itself. I know you’ve said that Seven Killings was your ‘eff you’ novel. The novel where you set down on the page all the things you thought you couldn’t before, and where you broke convention. But afterwards, did you feel more freedom or more set back? 

MJ: I don’t know if I felt either. I didn’t really feel any sort of pressure. I don’t know if it would’ve been different if I’d had a debut novel win the Booker. I don’t know. I should ask Doug [Douglas Stuart]. For me it was because I’d been published before, and published by a small publisher, and I already knew what rock bottom felt like. So whatever happens, happens. The commercial prospects, post Booker, didn’t really scare me at all. Whether the next book sells a lot or doesn’t sell at all, it didn’t really matter because I’d been through so much of that. Also, I realised that one way to stay grounded when you’re in the middle of any type of hype is to just start writing the next book. So I had actually started thinking of the next book before Brief History was even published, before it even came out. I was already so busy in a mediaeval African fantasy world, so far removed from the present day. That’s where my head was. 

JW: There must be Booker-winning authors who really just abandon themselves, who just relish it and think, this is great. I’m famous now. I’m going to really love this, being feted everywhere. Was that a temptation? 

MJ: It was a total temptation. I totally gave in to it, of course. But there’s ‘famous’ and there’s ‘book famous’. It’s not like anybody was going to invite me to the same places they invite Usain Bolt or so on. But at the same time, being book famous certainly beats being not famous. Because for one thing – and I’ll tell you one thing that changed because of the Booker – so many countries became curious that may not have heard of me before. The book got translated into, I think, over 32 languages, which wouldn’t have happened otherwise. So the exposure and the curiosity that this prize still creates around the world does change you in certain ways. 

JW: It would seem to me that it’s quite a tricky book to translate. Did you get puzzled emails from translators? 

MJ: Not really. Because I think what most translators did is translate it into whatever was their country’s street culture. They just use that language, so I think it was actually a lot easier than people thought. And also, everybody’s heard of Bob Marley. They know some Jamaican patois. Usually the person who translated the book knew more about Jamaica than me. 

JH: I’d like to ask about something else you’ve written – a television series for HBO, Get Millie Black. Can you tell us about that? 

MJ: Sure, it’s a co-production between HBO and Channel Four. It’s a story about a Jamaican woman who left for London aged nine. She worked for Scotland Yard and left with a dark cloud over her name and came back to Jamaica. She ends up being embroiled in a case that takes her right back to the UK she left behind. It’s not based on anything. It was just an original story that I wrote. 

JH: Can I ask how screenwriting compares to novel writing? 

MJ: Well, novel writing is a pleasure. Dot, dot, dot. 

JH: Whether you’re writing for television or writing books, do characters stay with you? It’s quite a vivid process that you go through as a writer, having favourites, almost falling in love with them. When you finish a relationship, you think about the person you left for months after… 

MJ: Sometimes. A lot of times I don’t. I think one of the reasons why my books are mostly pretty long is because I can’t let go. And particularly A Brief History where I kept jumping. Every decade, I’m like, but what are they doing in this decade? So I do think when I end a book is when I’m ready to let go. I don’t think I’ve thought about the lives of characters afterwards, or not much. I’m not driven by the idea of sequels, for example. Because I think the reason why my books are long is that I want to spend as much time as I can to get the full story. I always have a problem ending novels. With A Brief History, I went on for a good 20 pages before I realised, ‘dude, this book ended 20 pages ago’. 

JW: What’s the most fun part of the writing process for you, and what are the least fun parts? 

MJ: The most fun part for me is the actual writing, actually. 

JH: No one ever says that! 

MJ: I know, but I love it. The actual writing, the typing, getting the idea down on the page. And for me, I am open enough that I’m still sometimes surprised by where my own stories go. And that to me is a lot of fun. The thing I absolutely hate doing is conceiving the idea. One of the reasons I think why I am not under pressure to match previous sales or follow the success of the Booker and so on is that I have enough pressure on my own to decide what am I going to write next. I never remember the process of beginning a book. I remember ending them. I never remember beginning them. And I keep going, oh man, I forgot that this is hard. I don’t like this at all. Figuring out whose story it is, what voice it should be in. Is it third person, second, first? And I don’t have an efficient way of doing it. All I can do is keep writing until I go, this isn’t working, and start over. 

JW: This might be a slightly brutal question, but do you have any idea of what the next book is? Have you got something lined up? 

MJ: Oh yeah. I know it exactly. 

JW: And are you allowed to say? 

MJ: I would say it’s about a hidden, not-spoken-about corner of Jamaican life. I’m looking at it from the 1940s to now. 

JW: And do we know what that hidden aspect is, or is that a secret? 

MJ: I’m so not telling you! 

JH: You were pushing your luck there, James. 

This an edited excerpt from an episode of the Booker Prize Podcast which was first released in August 2023. You can listen to the full episode here.