Marlon James Returns to Realism, and to Jamaica

In his new novel, gay men struggle to escape violence in Kingston.

Illustration by Roche August 11, 2026, 7 AM ET Share Save Listen − 1.0 x + Seek 0:00 15:01 The Jamaican writer Marlon James won international fame with A Brief History of Seven Killings , which was awarded the Booker Prize in 2015. That title misled—the book describes dozens of killings, not just seven, and it is by no means brief—but its premise delivered. The 700-page novel, his third, revisits the Jamaican election of 1976 and the assassination attempt on Bob Marley that year; the gang truce of 1978; and the violence that preceded and followed, first in Kingston, then in New York City during the 1980s and early 1990s. Lots of Americans, myself included, learned some pivotal Jamaican history and some Jamaican English and patois from its many troubled narrators.