Marlon James wins Man Booker Prize 2015

Jamaican author Marlon James has won the Man Booker Prize for his novel inspired by the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in the 1970s. The 44-year-old, now a resident of Minneapolis, is the first Jamaican author to win the prize in its 47-year history. A Brief History of Seven Killings is a 704-page epic with over 75 characters and voices. Set in Kingston, where James was born, the book is a fictional history of the attempted murder of Bob Marley in 1976. Of the book, the New York Times said, "It’s like a Tarantino remake of 'The Harder They Come', but with a soundtrack by Bob Marley and a script by Oliver Stone and William Faulkner ... epic in every sense of that word - sweeping, mythic, over-the-top, colossal and dizzyingly complex."
Referring to Bob Marley only as ‘The Singer’ throughout, 'A Brief History of Seven Killings' retells this near mythic assassination attempt through myriad voices – from witnesses and FBI and CIA agents to killers, ghosts, beauty queens and Keith Richards’ drug dealer – to create a rich, polyphonic study of violence, politics and the musical legacy of Kingston of the 1970s. James has credited Charles Dickens as one of his formative influences, saying "I still consider myself a Dickensian in as much as there are aspects of storytelling I still believe in—plot, surprise, cliffhangers".