A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James review – bloody conflicts in 70s Jamaica
BIOGRAPHY
James’s impressive third novel sets the attempted assassination of Bob Marley against the cacophony and violence of Jamaica as the CIA moved in
Kei Miller
Wednesday 10 December 2014
T
he Jamaican novelist Marlon James has written three books to date – a kind of triple-jump feat, though that metaphor isn’t quite appropriate when one considers the extraordinary length of the leap he has taken between each book. His first novel, John Crow’s Devil, established him as an interesting local writer with an imagination markedly different from that of other Jamaican and Caribbean writers; he relished the darkness and gore rather than the sunshine and bouncy music. But John Crow’s Devil, a small novel of hardly 200 pages, did not prepare anyone for what was to come next: The Book of Night Women.