WASHINGTON, DC – Jamaican author Marlon James on Wednesday (March 4) launched his second novel ‘The Book of Night Women’ in Washington DC, which is a grim and frightening look at the oppressiveness of slavery, told from the female perspective.
A novel centers on the form of slavery that existed in the West Indies, including its diabolical methods of control, but ultimately the irrepressible, ardent, and ultimately victorious spirit of freedom.
Marlon James
James, in his book, takes the perspective of a group of Jamaican slave women from two centuries ago to give readers entrée into a world at once known and unknown, with clear parallels to the American South, but also with its own characters, conditions, time and place.
Speaking at the launch held at the Borders Book Store, Mr. James said that the book was quite unusual as it was written in Jamaican dialect. He said he was initially turned down by a British publisher as they wanted him to modify the language. He however refused and went to an American publisher, who accepted his original manuscript.
Marlon James was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1970. His first novel, John Crow’s Devil (2005), was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Commonwealth Prize, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice.
James graduated from the University of the West Indies in 1991 with a degree in literature, and from Wilkes University in Pennsylvania in 2006 with a master’s in creative writing. His short fiction has appeared in the anthologies Iron Balloons, Bronx Noir, and Silent Voices, and his nonfiction has been published in the Caribbean Review of Books.
He has taught at the Calabash International Literary Festival Workshop in Kingston and the Gotham Writers Workshop in New York City, and was a judge for the PEN Beyond Margins Award.
Currently a professor of literature and creative writing at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, James spends a lot of time in Jamaica.
