Marlon James was born in Jamaica in 1970. He is the author of the New York Times-bestseller Black Leopard, Red Wolf, which was a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction in 2019. His novel A Brief History of Seven Killings won the 2015 Man Booker Prize. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for fiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction, and the Minnesota Book Award. It was also a New York Times Notable Book. James is also the author of The Book of Night Women, which won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Minnesota Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction and an NAACP Image Award. His first novel, John Crow’s Devil, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. James divides his time between Minnesota and New York.
Praise for Black Leopard, Red Wolf:
“Gripping, action-packed… The literary equivalent of a Marvel
Comics universe — filled with dizzying, magpie references
to old movies and recent TV, ancient myths and classic comic books,
and fused into something new and startling by his gifts for
language and sheer inventiveness.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New
York Times
“No novel this year was as intoxicated by the pleasures and
possibilities of storytelling as this bloody, bawdy, profane,
deliriously overstuffed work of high fantasy. The first part of a
planned trilogy, Marlon James’s book already boasts more swagger
and invention than most multivolume epics dragging toward their
10th installment.” —The Wall Street Journal, Best Books of 2019
“The first volume of a promised trilogy, a fabulist reimagining of
Africa, with inevitable echoes of Tolkien, George R.R. Martin
and Black Panther, but highly original, its language
surging with power, its imagination all-encompassing. . . . Marlon
is a writer who must be read.” —Salman Rushdie, TIME
“James’ visions don’t jettison you from reality so much as they
trap you in his mad-genius, mercurial mind. . . . Drenched in
African myth and folklore, and set in an astonishingly realized
pre-colonized sub-Saharan region, Black Leopard crawls with
creatures and erects kingdoms unlike any I’ve read. . . .
This is a revolutionary book.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Marlon James is one of those novelists who aren’t afraid to give a
performance, to change the states of language from viscous to
gushing to grand, to get all the way inside the people he’s
created... [Black Leopard, Red Wolf] looks like another great, big
tale of death, murder and mystery but more mystically
fantastical... Not only does this book come with a hefty cast of
characters (like Seven Killings), there are also shape shifters,
fairies, trolls, and, apparently, a map. The map might be handy.
But it might be the opposite of why you come to James—to get lost
in him.” —The New York Times
“Fantasy fiction gets a shot of adrenaline.” —Newsday
“Stand aside, Beowulf. There’s a new epic hero slashing his way
into our hearts, and we may never get all the blood off our hands.
. . . James is clear-cutting space for a whole new kingdom. ‘Black
Leopard, Red Wolf,’ the first spectacular volume of a planned
trilogy, rises up from the mists of time, glistening like viscera.
James has spun an African fantasy as vibrant, complex and haunting
as any Western mythology, and nobody who survives reading this book
will ever forget it. That thunder you hear is the jealous rage of
Olympian gods. . . . ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ has got nothing on this
ensemble.” —Washington Post
“Black Leopard, Red Wolf is bawdy (OK, filthy), lyrical, poignant,
violent (sometimes hyperviolent), riotous, funny (filthily
hilarious), complex, mysterious, and always under tight and
exquisite control…A world that is both fresh and beautifully
realized….Absolutely brilliant.” —LA Times
“James is a professed fantasy nerd, so Black Leopard, Red Wolf will
certainly appeal to fans of all the well-acknowledged authors with
at least two initials — George R.R. Martin, J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K.
Rowling, etc. But if you’ve read James’ 2014 novel A Brief History
of Seven Killings (decidedly not a sci-fi or fantasy book but a
700-page world-building epic about the attempted assassination of
Bob Marley), you’ll drag yourself to the midnight queue to buy
Black Leopard regardless of the whole ‘Game of Thrones’ selling
point.” —Huffington Post
“Black Leopard, Red Wolf is the kind of novel I never realized I
was missing until I read it. A dangerous, hallucinatory, ancient
Africa, which becomes a fantasy world as well-realized as anything
Tolkien made, with language as powerful as Angela Carter's. It's as
deep and crafty as Gene Wolfe, bloodier than Robert E. Howard, and
all Marlon James. It's something very new that feels old, in the
best way. I cannot wait for the next installment.” —Neil Gaiman
“This book begins like a fever dream and merges into world upon
world of deadly fairy tales rich with political magic. Black
Leopard, Red Wolf is a fabulous cascade of storytelling. Sink right
in. I guarantee you will be swept downstream.” —Louise Erdrich
“The novel teems with nightmares: devils, witches, giants,
shape-shifters, haunted woods, magic portals. It’s terrifying,
sensual, hard to follow—but somehow indelible, too.”
—Vogue
“Black Leopard, Red Wolf aims to be an event, and to counter the
dominant impression of the genre it inhabits. . . . Black Leopard
delivers some genre-specific satisfactions: the fight scenes are
choreographed with comic-book wit . . . But it deliberately upends
others. When I first saw the news that James was writing a fantasy
trilogy, I had assumed that, after reaching the pinnacle of
critical acclaim, with the Booker, he was pivoting to the land of
the straightforward best-seller. . . . Instead, he’d written not
just an African fantasy novel but an African fantasy novel that is
literary and labyrinthine to an almost combative degree.” —The New
Yorker
“He’s produced a sprawling fantasy novel set in a dark-age Africa
of witches, spirits, dazzling imperial citadels and impenetrable
forests. In a genre dominated by imagery derived from the European
middle ages, Black Leopard, Red Wolf feels new and exciting.” —Wall
Street Journal
“A miracle... If Charles R. Saunders’ Imaro series opened the door
to new ways of telling epic fantasy, and N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance
trilogy leapt over the threshold, then Marlon James’ Black
Leopard, Red Wolf just ripped the whole damn door off its
hinges.” —Tor
“A sprawling, epic fantasy... Fuses mythology, fantasy, and African
history into a sensual, psychological triumph.” —Esquire
“Like the best fantasy, like the best literary fiction, like the
best art period, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is uncanny.” —Boston
Globe
“Black Leopard, Red Wolf [will] surely redefine fantasy for many
years to come.” —Houston Chronicle
“A standard-bearer for future fantasies.” —Minneapolis Star
Tribune
“This is the kind of immersive fantasy saga that develops a devoted
following, an impressive display of inspired storytelling that’s
only just getting started.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Perhaps no other contemporary fiction writer takes such risks and
uses such provocative, sensual descriptions as James (who
masterfully mixes in smells and sounds as well as sights to build a
world).” —Interview Magazine “What marks James’s tale as his own is
the wonder evoked through descriptive, unrelenting prose along with
a focus on a distinct mythology cobbled from history and folk tale.
The propulsive narrative has already been optioned by Michael B
Jordan, so expect to see this one coming to screens fairly soon.”
—The Guardian
“James' sensual, beautifully rendered prose and sweeping, precisely
detailed narrative cast their own transfixing spell upon the
reader. He not only brings a fresh multicultural perspective to a
grand fantasy subgenre, but also broadens the genre's psychological
and metaphysical possibilities. If this first volume is any
indication, James' trilogy could become one of the most
talked-about and influential adventure epics since George R.R.
Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire was transformed into Game of
Thrones.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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