Marlon James wins the Man Booker prize 2015

Author of A Brief History of Seven Killings – a fictional account of an attempt to take Bob Marley’s life – first Jamaican writer to win prestigious prize

• Marlon James is an uncompromising and exhilarating Man Booker winner
• A Brief History of Seven Killings, reviewed – bloody conflicts in 70s Jamaica
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• Marlon James has become the first Jamaican writer to win the Man Booker prize, taking the award for an epic, uncompromising novel not for the faint of heart. It brims with shocking gang violence, swearing, graphic sex, drug crime but also, said the judges, a lot of laughs.

  Visceral and uncompromising ... but it’s also an ingeniously structured feat of storytelling

  Jonathan Ruppin

  A Brief History of Seven Killings, a fictional history of the attempted murder of Bob Marley in 1976, was “an extraordinary book”, said Michael Wood, the chair of judges. “[It was] very exciting, very violent, full of swearing. It was a book we didn’t actually have any difficulty deciding on – it was a unanimous decision, a little bit to our surprise.”
  • Listen to an excerpt from our upcoming Guardian Books podcast interview with Marlon James:
  • newsworld844.blogspot.com