PREMISE: 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.
I know I said I’d never write anything negative on here but in my defence, this isn’t about books. And it’s very difficult to sustain a holier-than-thou stance across so many posts before my natural childishly sarcastic tendencies kick in. Anyway, I hate reggae music. Well, hate is a strong word. But if I’m ever jailed at Guantanamo then my captors should eschew Megadeth and Slayer, plop a red, green and yellow bobble hat on my head and torture me with Jimmy Cliff and Aswad. I’d turn snitch and spill the beans on everyone.
What I do like, however, is a fictional story based around factual events and containing real-life characters (see American Tabloid for the ultimate example of this). Particularly when there’s an air of the unknown around the specific details. I love the speculative aspect of it. The ‘this-could-easily-be-the-truth-you-know’ of it. The idea that you’re somehow learning something additional about a piece of history, whether it’s ultimately true or not.
This book, very much like American Tabloid, is pretty mind-blowing in terms of its scope and ambition and what it ultimately achieves. It’s the sort of book that leaves you so grateful that people as smart and eloquent as Marlon James are out there and devote so much of their time to writing something as breathtaking and gargantuan as this.
Oh, and it’s the 2018 Portland Award winner. ‘Nuff said.
Portable Wonderland 