Join Goodreads

to see if your friends have read any of Marlon James’s books

Marlon James

4972 followers

Marlon James is a Jamaican-born writer. He has published three novels: John Crow's Devil (2005), The Book of Night Women (2009) and A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014), winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize. Now living in Minneapolis, James teaches literatuMoreMarlon James is a Jamaican-born writer. He has published three novels: John Crow's Devil (2005), The Book of Night Women (2009) and A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014), winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize. Now living in Minneapolis, James teaches literature at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.

James was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to parents who were both in the Jamaican police: his mother (who gave him his first prose book, a collection of stories by O. Henry) became a detective and his father (from whom James took a love of Shakespeare and Coleridge) a lawyer. James is a 1991 graduate of the University of the West Indies, where he read Language and Literature. He received a master's degree in creative writing from Wilkes University (2006).

James has taught English and creative writing at Macalester College since 2007. His first novel, John Crow's Devil — which was rejected 70 times before being accepted for publication — tells the story of a biblical struggle in a remote Jamaican village in 1957. His second novel, The Book of Night Women, is about a slave woman's revolt in a Jamaican plantation in the early 19th century. His most recent novel, 2014's A Brief History of Seven Killings, explores several decades of Jamaican history and political instability through the perspectives of many narrators. It won the fiction category of the 2015 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, having been the first book by a Jamaican author ever to be shortlisted. He is the second Caribbean winner of the prize, following Trinidad-born V. S. Naipaul who won in 1971.

(from Wikipedia) Less

Marlon James’s Books

Avg rating: 3.85 97,558 ratings 15,771 reviews

Similar authors

A Brief History of Seven Killings

3.89 38,826 ratings 5301 reviews

Published 2014 83 Editions
Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy, #1)

3.45 31,248 ratings 6451 reviews

Published 2019 3 Editions
The Book of Night Women

4.37 15,329 ratings 2223 reviews

Published 2009 33 Editions
Moon Witch, Spider King (The Dark Star Trilogy #2)

4.16 5,396 ratings 794 reviews

Published 2022 34 Editions
John Crow's Devil

3.72 2,219 ratings 313 reviews

Published 2005 29 Editions

More books by Marlon James

Series

The Dark Star Trilogy

3 primary works • 3 total works

All series by Marlon James

Author Details

Born in Kingston, Jamaica on November 24, 1970.

Genre: Fiction

Quotes

Killing don’t need no reason. This is ghetto. Reason is for rich people. We have madness.

Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings

Tags: killing, madness

I think that’s what Toni Morrison and Alice Walker understand, the secret language of women. That it’s not a secret at all; men just don’t know how to listen.

Marlon James

Tags: alice-walker, listening, men, men-and-women, secret, toni-morrison, understanding, women