Marlon James (born 24 November 1970) is a Jamaican writer. He is the author of five novels: ''

John Crow's Devil ''John Crow's Devil'' is the 2005 debut novel by author Marlon James. The book was first published by Akashic Books in New York. The story is set in 1957 in the fictional town of Gibbeah, Jamaica, where two men fight to be the town's singular rel ...

'' (2005), '' The Book of Night Women'' (2009), '' A Brief History of Seven Killings'' (2014), which won him the 2015 Man Booker Prize, '' Black Leopard, Red Wolf'' (2019), and '' Moon Witch, Spider King'' (2022). Now living in

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

, in the U.S., James teaches literature at

Macalester College Macalester College () is a private liberal arts college in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Founded in 1874, Macalester is exclusively an undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 2,174 students in the fall of 2018 from 50 U.S. states, four U.S te ...

St. Paul Paul; grc, Παῦλος, translit=Paulos; cop, ⲡⲁⲩⲗⲟⲥ; hbo, פאולוס השליח (previously called Saul of Tarsus;; ar, بولس الطرسوسي; grc, Σαῦλος Ταρσεύς, Saũlos Tarseús; tr, Tarsuslu Pavlus; ...

, Minnesota. He is also a faculty lecturer at St. Francis College's Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing."Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing"
St. Francis College.

Early life and education

James was born in Kingston,

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

, 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 William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

and

Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake ...

) a lawyer. James attended Kingston's prestigious Wolmer's Trust High School for Boys. He is a 1991 graduate of the University of the West Indies, where he read Language and Literature. He left Jamaica to escape anti-gay violence and economic conditions that he felt would mean career stagnation, later explaining: "Whether it was in a plane or a coffin, I knew I had to get out of Jamaica." He received a master's degree in creative writing from

Wilkes University Wilkes University is a private university in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. It has over 2,200 undergraduates and over 2,200 graduate students (both full and part-time). Wilkes was founded in 1933 as a satellite campus of Bucknell University, and bec ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

(2006).

Career

James' first novel, ''John Crow's Devil'' (2005) – 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'' (2009), is about a slave woman's revolt in a Jamaican plantation in the early 19th century. His 2014 novel, '' 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 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, inaugurated in 2011 by the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, is an annual literary award for books by Caribbean writers published in the previous year. and the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, having been the first book by a Jamaican author ever to be shortlisted."The Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2015 shortlist is revealed"
, The Man Booker Prize website, 15 September 2015. He is the second Caribbean winner of the prize, following

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

-born

V. S. Naipaul Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (; 17 August 1932 – 11 August 2018) was a Trinidadian-born British writer of works of fiction and nonfiction in English. He is known for his comic early novels set in Trinidad, his bleaker novels of alienati ...

who won in 1971. James's most recent work, ''Moon Witch, Spider King'' (2022) is the second in a planned fantasy series which began with ''Black Leopard, Red Wolf'' (2019). James has taught English and creative writing at

in St. Paul, Minnesota, since 2007. He is also a faculty lecturer at St. Francis College's Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing. In February 2019, James gave the seventh annual

Tolkien Lecture The J.R.R. Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature is a free public lecture delivered annually at Pembroke College, Oxford University. The series was founded by Pembroke postgraduate students Will Badger and Gabriel Schenk in memory of J.R.R. Tol ...

at Pembroke College, Oxford. In 2020, James began co-hosting with his editor Jake Morrissey a literary podcast called "Marlon and Jake Read Dead People" that explores, in a casual setting, the work of deceased authors. In 2021, James had begun writing his first television series for HBO and

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

titled '' Get Millie Black''.

Themes

Themes in James's work span religion and the supernatural, sexuality, violence, and colonialism. Often, his novels display the struggle to find an identity, whether it be as a slave or a postcolonial inhabitant of Jamaica.

''John Crow's Devil'' (2005)

In ''

'', his first novel, James explores postcolonial Jamaica through a religiously charged, archetypal battle of good and evil. His characters in this novel represent, through their archetypal portrayals, many facets of humanity including hope. Despite the particular setting, the novel "conveys archetypal situations that reside in the collective unconsciousness." Additionally, this piece of Caribbean gothic reveals the power of guilt and hypocrisy both in a person and in a community, and generally reveals truths of human nature. The ghosts of colonialism are more subtle, but the instability and struggle for identity is clear to the reader.

''The Book of Night Women'' (2009)

In '' The Book of Night Women'', James challenges the traditional slave narrative by presenting a protagonist (Lilith) who approaches her enslavement with complex duality, despite the constant description of antagonism between slaves and masters on a plantation in Jamaica. Lilith hates the masters, but much of the novel deals with how she "aspires to obtain a privileged stature within plantation society by submitting to the sexual subjugation of a white overseer, Robert Quinn". This is additionally challenged by Lilith and Robert's "love", leading the reader to question the limits of love and relationships. James intends to have readers root for Robert and Lilith, but then catch themselves, as Robert Quinn has a reputation as a brutal, violent overseer—even ordering Lilith to be severely whipped. The situation for the reader is further complicated because Quinn is Irish, another population that was looked down upon during the time period. While this at times brings him sympathy, his whiteness overshadows his Irishness. Additionally, the novel explores the complexity of what it is to be a woman, with some characters having deep connections to

Obeah Obeah, or Obayi, is an ancestrally inherited tradition of Akan witches of Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Togo and their descendants in the African diaspora of the Caribbean. Inheritors of the tradition are referred to as "obayifo" (Akan/Ghana-region ...

and

Myal Myal is an Afro-Jamaican spirituality. It developed via the creolization of African religions during the slave era in Jamaica. It incorporates ritualistic magic, spiritual possession and dancing. Unlike Obeah, its practices focus more on the conne ...

spiritualism. The female slaves are portrayed as strong-willed and intelligent, while the male slaves are often portrayed as weak, thoughtless, and even traitorous. "Rape, torture, murder and other dehumanizing acts propel the narrative, never failing to shock in both their depravity and their humanness. It is this complex intertwining that makes James’s book so disturbing and so eloquent". The novel "defies hegemonic notions of empire by pointing out the explosive and antagonistic relationship between colonizers and colonized."

''A Brief History of Seven Killings'' (2014)

James's 2014 novel, '' A Brief History of Seven Killings'', portrays "a passionate, often angry account of postcolonial society struggling to balance identity and a burgeoning criminal element." The novel has twelve narrators, contributing to the "excess" that Sheri-Marie Harrison explores in her article "Excess in A Brief History of Seven Killings". She explains: "James's rejection of a purely nationalist tradition, like that of other authors in his cohort, concretizes his critique of the ways nationalism distracts us from the increased deregulation of global capital and its production of material inequality around the globe. This disruption of privileged tropes in the interest of turning attention onto the transnational forces that structure inequality helps to explain James's use of 'a poetics of excess.' His experimentation with form functions to rework now familiar paradigms and themes that have been central to the literary imagination of postcolonial realities for a little over half a century."

''Black Leopard, Red Wolf'' (2019)

His book, '' Black Leopard, Red Wolf'' (2019) — characterized as "an African '' Game of Thrones'' — is the first instalment of a planned trilogy. It has been described by

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

journalist

Ari Shapiro Ari Michael Shapiro (born September 30, 1978) is an American radio journalist. In September 2015, Shapiro became one of four rotating hosts on National Public Radio's flagship drive-time program ''All Things Considered''. He previously s ...

as "an epic fantasy quest — full of monsters, sex, and violence, set in a mythic version of ancient Africa." According to ''

TIME magazine ''Time'' (stylized in all caps) is an American news magazine based in New York City. For nearly a century, it was published weekly, but starting in March 2020 it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York City on Ma ...

'', the novel "joins the ranks of those by authors like Tomi Adeyemi and N. K. Jemisin, whose works push back against stereotypes about the types of figures who 'should' appear in fantasy fiction."

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...

and

Michael B. Jordan Michael Bakari Jordan (; born February 9, 1987) is an American actor. He is known for his film roles as shooting victim Oscar Grant in the drama ''Fruitvale Station'' (2013), boxer Adonis Creed in ''Creed'' (2015), and Erik Killmonger in ''Bl ...

's production company Outlier Society acquired the book's film rights in 2019.

''Moon Witch, Spider King'' (2022)

The sequel to ''Black Leopard, Red Wolf'' in 2022, titled '' Moon Witch, Spider King'', was published by Riverhead in 2022.

Influences

James's influences include authors as well as musicians. In his acceptance speech for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, James explained: "The reggae singers

Bob Marley Robert Nesta Marley (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981; baptised in 1980 as Berhane Selassie) was a Jamaican singer, musician, and songwriter. Considered one of the pioneers of reggae, his musical career was marked by fusing elements o ...

and Peter Tosh were the first to recognize that the voice coming out our mouths was a legitimate voice for fiction and for poetry." In other words, these singers empowered other artists such as James to create. In his popular 2015 essay "From Jamaica to Minnesota to Myself", published in the ''New York Times Magazine'', James describes reading

Salman Rushdie Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and We ...

's novel ''

Shame Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious emotion often associated with negative self-evaluation; motivation to quit; and feelings of pain, exposure, distrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness. Definition Shame is a discrete, basic emotion, d ...

'' (1983): "Its prose was so audacious, its reality so unhinged, that you didn't see at first how pointedly political and just plain furious it was. It made me realize that the present was something I could write my way out of." James has said that he re-read

Ben Okri Ben Okri (born 15 March 1959) is a Nigerian-British poet and novelist.Ben Okri"
British Council, ...

's 1991 novel ''

The Famished Road ''The Famished Road'' is a novel by Nigerian author Ben Okri, the first book in a trilogy that continues with ''Songs of Enchantment'' (1993) and ''Infinite Riches'' (1998). Published in London in 1991 by Jonathan Cape, the story of ''The Famis ...

'' while writing ''Black Leopard, Red Wolf'': "Okri is such an influence on me. I've read ''Famished Road'' like four times." A lifelong fan of comics, James has cited comic characters such as "

Hellboy Hellboy is a fictional superhero created by writer-artist Mike Mignola. The character first appeared in ''San Diego Comic-Con Comics'' #2 (August 1993), and has since appeared in various eponymous miniseries, one-shots and intercompany crossover ...

" as an influence on his work, citing comics' ability to blend genres as an inspiration to his own approach to writing fiction.

Tone and style

James's work carries a unique style, often referred to as disturbing, brutal, and violent, leading him to be compared in one review to

Quentin Tarantino Quentin Jerome Tarantino (; born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, writer, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by stylized violence, extended dialogue, profanity, dark humor, non-linear storylines, cameos, ensembl ...

, who is known for his excessive use of violence in his films. James does not hold back in his graphic descriptions of sexual and violent acts, which contributes to the raw nature of his writing. "James does not set out to entertain, he does not want readers to be entertained by shocking events: he believes they should be rightly horrified…" His work is challenging and lyrical, and he often uses

Jamaican Patois Jamaican Patois (; locally rendered Patwah and called Jamaican Creole by linguists) is an English-based creole language with West African influences, spoken primarily in Jamaica and among the Jamaican diaspora. A majority of the non-English ...

in dialogue, and often uses multiple dialects for different characters. His style strays from traditional and expected

Caribbean literature Caribbean literature is the literature of the various territories of the Caribbean region. Literature in English from the former British West Indies may be referred to as Anglo-Caribbean or, in historical contexts, as West Indian literature. Most o ...

by "creating wild and risky new possibilities for thinking about the region's place in our contemporary reality." James has stated that he commits offences in his writing that he would not allow his students to commit, "such as writing seven-page sentences." James's writing has been compared to that of

Toni Morrison Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist. Her first novel, ''The Bluest Eye'', was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed '' So ...

William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most o ...

, and

Gabriel García Márquez Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez (; 6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo () or Gabito () throughout Latin America. Considered one ...

Reception

Reception of James's novels has been conflicted—the same elements that some critics find to be strengths, others believe are his weaknesses. The conflicting nature of how readers and reviewers respond stems from reactions to the often upfront brutality juxtaposed with the mechanical elements that James uses to tell his stories. One critic writes: "The linguistic and stylistic excess which dominates ''A Brief History of Seven Killings'' both elevates it and burdens it." Another reviewer explained, "I have had conversations with fellow Caribbeanists and students in which they have used terms like 'orgiastic' and 'masturbatory' to describe James's writing." When reviewing ''The Book of Night Women'', another critic explains: "Rape, torture, murder and other dehumanizing acts propel the narrative, never failing to shock in both their depravity and their humanness. It is this complex intertwining that makes James’s book so disturbing and so eloquent."

Awards and honors

In 2013, James received a Silver

Musgrave Medal The Musgrave Medal is an annual award by the Institute of Jamaica in recognition of achievement in art, science, and literature.Webster, Valerie J. (2000), ''Awards, Honors & Prizes, Volume 2'', Gale Group, , p. 447. Originally conceived in 1889 a ...

from the

Institute of Jamaica The Institute of Jamaica (IOJ), founded in 1879, is the country's most significant cultural, artistic and scientific organisation:Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

's''

100 100 or one hundred ( Roman numeral: C) is the natural number following 99 and preceding 101. In medieval contexts, it may be described as the short hundred or five score in order to differentiate the English and Germanic use of "hundred" to de ...

Most Influential People. The same year, ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', '' Kirkus Reviews'', and ''

Shelf Awareness Shelf Awareness is an American publishing company that produces two electronic publications/newsletters focused on bookselling, books and book reviews. Overview With offices in Seattle, Washington, and Montclair, New Jersey, ''Shelf Awareness' ...

'' named '' Black Leopard, Red Wolf'' one of the best books of the year. In 2022, '' Kirkus Reviews'',

, ''

Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of ...

'' named '' Moon Witch, Spider King'' one of the best books of the year.

Works

Stand-alone literature

* * *

''The Dark Star'' trilogy

# # #

Television

*'' Get Millie Black'' (TBA)

References

External links

* Paul Holdengraber
"Marlon James needs noise to write (and other revelations)"
(interview), ''The Literary Hub'', 10 August 2017. * Joshua Jelly-Schapiro
"A Caribbean Literary Renaissance"
(interview), '' NYR Daily'', 1 March 2018. {{DEFAULTSORT:James, Marlon 1970 births 21st-century Jamaican novelists 21st-century male writers American Book Award winners American gay writers Booker Prize winners Jamaican emigrants to the United States Jamaican male novelists LGBT people from Minnesota Jamaican LGBT writers Living people Macalester College faculty People from Kingston, Jamaica Recipients of the Musgrave Medal University of the West Indies alumni Wilkes University alumni Writers from Minneapolis