Gay author Marlon James has won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings. Awarded for the best literary novel written in English, James is the first Jamaican to win the annual prize. A Brief History of Seven Killings is a fictional account of an assignation attempt of Bob Marley’s life in 1976. The chair of judges, Michael Wood said; “[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.” James describes it as “a novel of exile”, explaining that he needed to leave Jamaica in order to write the book. “I needed that distance, I needed that sense of maybe there wouldn’t be consequences,” he said. He dedicated the award to his late father, whom he says had shaped his “literary sensibilities”.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Thursday, 15th October 2015 - 9:42pm