On Tuesday 13th October an author, who only 10 years earlier considered giving up writing all together, was awarded the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Fiction – congratulation Marlon James!
The Jamaican born winner endured almost 80 rejections of his first novel, John Crow’s Devil, before it was published in 2005. Three novels later and A Brief History of Seven Killings has won Marlon £50,000, a designer bound copy of his book and a phenomenal increase in readership!
So it just goes to show if you have passion inside you – never give up!
A Brief History of Seven Killings is not for the faint hearted, indeed it comes with a warning to his own mother – “maybe my mother should stay away from part four of the book” – but the detail and imagination set him worlds apart from your standard murder mystery!
The story is a fictional version of events that take place over three decades (70s, 80s and 90s) around Reggae superstar Bob Marley. Set initially in Jamaica the story travels across time, and continents, during a treacherous and unstable period of history delving into the darkest depths of drugs, guns and the changing history of his hometown.
A Brief History of Seven Killings is on order and will be available to pick up from Ormskirk University Library shortly…
The Man Booker Prize was first awarded in 1969 and has been awarding annually ever since. If you are interested in finding out more, or even entering your own work for submission, the criteria is as follows…
“Any novel originally written in English and published in the UK in the year of the prize, regardless of the nationality of their author. The novel must be an original work in English (not a translation) and must not be self-published.”
The runners up in the 2015 awards were:
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler