Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | John Crow’s Devil | 2005 | Marlon James | Buy |
| 2 | The Book of Night Women | 2009 | Marlon James | Buy |
| 3 | A Brief History of Seven Killings | 2014 | Marlon James | Buy |
Marlon James’s three standalone novels are each set in Jamaica and deal with different periods of the island’s history. John Crow’s Devil (2005) takes place in a rural village in the 1950s, The Book of Night Women (2009) is set on an eighteenth-century sugar plantation, and A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014) spans the 1970s through the 1990s, using the attempted assassination of Bob Marley as its starting point.
A Brief History of Seven Killings won the Man Booker Prize in 2015, making James the first Jamaican author to receive the award. The novel runs over 700 pages and uses dozens of narrators to tell its story. It was a significant departure in scope from his first two books, which were shorter and more tightly focused. John Crow’s Devil was rejected 78 times before it was published, a fact James has spoken about openly.
These three novels stand apart from his later Dark Star trilogy, which moved into epic fantasy. Readers interested in James’s literary fiction should start here, with The Book of Night Women often recommended as the best entry point for those unfamiliar with his writing.