Marlon James wins the Man Booker Prize
Source: LA Times
Marlon James won the Man Booker Prize on Tuesday for his multivoiced novel "A Brief History of Seven Killings" at a black tie event in London. The prize is a the leading literary event in the UK and comes with an award of $78,000.
"Ten years ago I'd given up on writing," James said in his acceptance speech. "I figured clearly I'm not meant to write books."
James began his speech with a nod to the Man Booker. "It just hit me how much of my literary sensibility was shaped by the Man Booker Prize," he said. James was born and raised in Jamaica reading the British literature of the country's colonial past; the Man Booker was something different. "My great turning point as a writer was when a friend of mine handed me Salman Rushdie's 'Shame.'"
"A Brief History of Seven Killings" is James' third novel, an ambitious and powerful commentary on the impact of violence. Told from dozens of points of view in a number of different, novelized Jamaican patois, it spins out a fiction from the 1976 assassination attempt on Bob Marley -- referenced only as "The Singer" -- and features gang leaders, politicians, ferocious fighters, a music journalist, hired assassins and a tenacious woman who makes her way to America.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-marlon-james-wins-the-man-booker-prize-20151013-story.html
