Ten Years of Seven Killings

Marlon James

Celebrating the book’s tenth anniversary and his historic prize win, James takes the stage to discuss his work to date and how the success of A Brief History of Seven Killings shaped the trajectory of his writing career.

On December 3rd 1976 at around 8:30 PM, seven men armed with guns broke into 56 Hope Road where Bob Marley and his band were rehearsing for an upcoming gig. The gunmen managed to shoot Marley’s wife, his manager, a band employee, and Marley himself before fleeing the scene. Later, the gunmen would be tried and executed in a ghetto court with both the singer and his manager present.

A Brief History of Seven Killings reimagines this defining moment in the singer-songwriter’s storied life and career. Spanning three decades, its cast of characters range from drug dealers to journalists, ghosts to the CIA as they navigate the streets of 1970s Kingston, the crack houses of 1980s New York, and the radically altered Jamaica of the 1990s.

This masterpiece of speculative fiction won Marlon James the 2015 Man Booker Prize, making him the first ever Jamaican writer to win the prize. In this event celebrating the book’s tenth anniversary and his historic prize win, James takes the stage to discuss Marley’s legacy, his work to date, and how the success of the book shaped the trajectory of his writing career.

Marlon James is the author of the New York Times-bestseller Black Leopard, Red Wolf. A Brief History of Seven Killings won the 2015 Man Booker Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for fiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction, and the Minnesota Book Award. His other publications include The Book of Night Women and John Crow’s Devil.

This event will be chaired by writer Paul McVeigh, Paul’s debut novel, The Good Son, won The Polari First Novel Prize and The McCrea Literary Award. His short stories have appeared in anthologies, journals and his writing has been translated into seven languages.

Date : 

Sat 25 May

Time : 

19:00

Venue : 

Merrion Square Park – Speranza

Price : 

€20 / €18

Book here.