Novelist Marlon James has become the first Jamaican author to win the Man Booker Prize, for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings . The book, a fictional account of the attempted assassination of Bob Marley, is set amid political upheaval in Kingston in the late 1970s, reported Quartz .
A New York Times review of the book read, “It’s like a Tarantino remake of The Harder They Come but with a soundtrack by Bob Marley and a script by Oliver Stone and William Faulkner, with maybe a little creative boost from some primo ganja.”
“This book is startling in its range of voices and registers, running from the patois of the street posse to the Book of Revelation,” praised Michael Wood, chair of the 2015 Man Booker judges. The book “moves at a terrific pace, and will come to be seen as a classic of our times,” according to The Eco nomist report .
Twitter reactions:
Watch James accepting the award: