A Brief History of Seven Killings
Marlon James · 2014
The 1976 attempted assassination of Bob Marley, told through dozens of voices across three decades of Jamaican and American history. James's 700-page novel is polyphonic, violent, funny, and formally staggering. It won the 2015 Man Booker and proved that Caribbean literature could command the global stage on its own terms. The scope is insane. The voices are real.
The case against
Dozens of narrators, thick Jamaican patois, and a cast list long enough to need its own bookmark. James earns the chaos in the Kingston sections; the later New York crack-era chapters sprawl past their welcome. Magnificent in aggregate, punishing page by page, and seven hundred pages is a lot of aggregate.
Best of Last 10 Years · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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