A Brief History of Seven Killings
Marlon James · b. 1970 · Jamaica
Why it matters
The near-fatal 1976 shooting of an unnamed Bob Marley radiates outward through dozens of colliding narrators (gunmen, ghosts, journalists, CIA agents) across three decades of Jamaican political violence. Winner of the 2015 Booker Prize, and patois fiction's most ambitious epic.
At a glance
political novelcrime & noirpostmodern
Difficulty 8/10fast pace704 pagesDozens of shifting first-person narrators in dense Jamaican patois demand sustained close attention.
Deep dive
Why a novel with dozens of narrators refuses to let any single one of them own the story of a man everybody's talking about but almost nobody hears speak.
Where to go next
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Roberto Bolaño · 1998The Savage DetectivesLvl 7Medium pace
Juan Gabriel Vásquez · 2011The Sound of Things FallingLvl 5Medium pace