Announcing November Author in the Spotlight
Happy November. This is the busiest month of the year for me. My grades are due tomorrow, my new carpet is coming at the end of the week, then I need to clean, clean and clean until Thanksgiving because I'm having 35 people over for dinner. Agh.
I will basically be reading only 1 book this month and that is by November Author in the Spotlight, Marlon James. His newest book, A Brief History of Seven Killings: A Novel is the talk of the book world this Fall and I can't wait to read it.
Marlon James teaches college and writes amazing books. Check them out.
Here are the synopsis according to Good Reads:
A Brief History of Seven Killings: A Novel.
From the acclaimed author of The Book of Night Women comes a masterfully written novel that
explores the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in the late 1970s.
On December 3, 1976, just before the Jamaican general election and two days before Bob Marley was to play the Smile Jamaica Concert, gunmen stormed his house, machine guns blazing. The attack nearly killed the Reggae superstar, his wife, and his manager, and injured several others. Marley would go on to perform at the free concert on December 5, but he left the country the next day, not to return for two years.
Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters—assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts—A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the �70s, to the crack wars in �80s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the �90s. Brilliantly inventive and stunningly ambitious, this novel is a revealing modern epic that will secure Marlon James’ place among the great literary talents of his generation.
The Book of Night Women
The Book of Night Women is a sweeping, startling novel, a true tour de force of both voice and storytelling. It is the story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century. Even at her birth, the slave women around her recognize a dark power that they and she will come to both revere and fear.
The Night Women, as they call themselves, have long been plotting a slave revolt, and as Lilith comes of age and reveals the extent of her power, they see her as the key to their plans. But when she begins to understand her own feelings and desires and identity, Lilith starts to push at the edges of what is imaginable for the life of a slave woman in Jamaica, and risks becoming the conspiracy's weak link.
Lilith's story overflows with high drama and heartbreak, and life on the plantation is rife with dangerous secrets, unspoken jealousies, inhuman violence, and very human emotion between slave and master, between slave and overseer, and among the slaves themselves. Lilith finds herself at the heart of it all. And all of it told in one of the boldest literary voices to grace the page recently--and the secret of that voice is one of the book's most intriguing mysteries.
John Crow's Devil
“Pile them up, a Marlon James character says repeatedly, and Marlon does just that. Pile them up:
language, imagery, technique, imagination. All fresh, all exciting. This is a writer to watch out for.”—Chris Abani, author of GraceLand, winner of the Hemingway/PEN Award
“This is the finest and most important first novel I’ve read in years. James’s writing brings to mind early Toni Morrison, Jessica Hagedorn, and Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez.”—Kaylie Jones, author of Speak Now and A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries
“Marlon James spins his magical web in this novel and we willingly suspend disbelief, rewarded by the window he opens to Jamaica (and a world) rarely portrayed in fiction.”—Elizabeth Nunez, author of Bruised Hibiscus, winner of the American Book Award
This stunning debut novel tells the story of a biblical struggle in a remote Jamaican village in 1957. With language as taut as classic works by Cormac McCarthy, and a richness reminiscent of early Toni Morrison, Marlon James reveals his unique narrative command that will firmly establish his place as one of today's freshest, most talented young writers.
In the village of Gibbeah--where certain women fly and certain men protect secrets with their lives--magic coexists with religion, and good and evil are never as they seem. In this town, a battle is fought between two men of God. The story begins when a drunkard named Hector Bligh (the "Rum Preacher") is dragged from his pulpit by a man calling himself "Apostle" York. Handsome and brash, York demands a fire-and-brimstone church, but sets in motion a phenomenal and deadly struggle for the soul of Gibbeah itself. John Crow's Devil is a novel about religious mania, redemption, sexual obsession, and the eternal struggle inside all of us between the righteous and the wicked.
This month you can expect a book review, a giveaway and an author interview. It is going to be great!
Happy Reading!
I took three trips this year. I went to New York City in January and again at the end of March with my daughter and several high school students. I LOVE NYC! Then in June I traveled to Maryland/DC area for National History Day and my student Tasha took home the top prize in the Nation in the senior paper category. It was an amazing experience and one that I will never forget. It was the highlight of my teaching career so far.
