One of TIME’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time Winner of the L.A. Times Ray Bradbury Prize Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award The New York Times Bestseller Named a Best Book of 2019 by The Wall Street Journal, TIME, NPR, GQ, Vogue, and The Washington Post "A fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made." --Neil Gaiman "Gripping, action-packed....The literary equivalent of a Marvel Comics universe." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times The epic novel from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings In the stunning first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard. As Tracker follows the boy's scent--from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers--he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying? Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that's come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both.
One of TIME’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time Winner of the L.A. Times Ray Bradbury Prize Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award The New York Times Bestseller Named a Best Book of 2019 by The Wall Street Journal, TIME, NPR, GQ, Vogue, and The Washington Post "A fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made." --Neil Gaiman "Gripping, action-packed....The literary equivalent of a Marvel Comics universe." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times The epic novel from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings In the stunning first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard. As Tracker follows the boy's scent--from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers--he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying? Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that's come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both.
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The Dark Star Trilogy
The Dark Star Trilogy
2 books in catalog
Spanning historical fiction, epic fantasy, and contemporary drama, Jamaican narrative literature reached a milestone when the 2015 Man Booker Prize went to a sprawling, multi-voiced novel centered around the 1976 assassination attempt on Bob Marley. Marlon James became the first Jamaican author to receive the prestigious award for A Brief History of Seven Killings, establishing an expansive body of work that blends rigorous historical exploration with complex oral storytelling techniques.
From haunting historical narratives set during Caribbean slavery to African mythological fantasy sagas like Black Leopard, Red Wolf, his fiction frequently investigates power, violence, and marginalized identities through intricate multi-perspective structures.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, on November 24, 1970, James grew up in a household where his mother worked as a police detective, an environment that early on exposed him to complex investigative narratives and police reporting. He published his debut novel, John Crow's Devil, in 2005, gaining recognition as a finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. He followed this with his 2009 historical novel The Book of Night Women, which depicts a women's slave revolt on a Jamaican sugar plantation. The novel won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Minnesota Book Award while placing as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the NAACP Image Award.
Following the international success of A Brief History of Seven Killings, James expanded into epic fantasy with the Dark Star trilogy, drawing heavily on African mythology and folklore. Beyond prose fiction, he wrote the television limited series Get Millie Black. James currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has taught literature and creative writing as a faculty member at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in addition to lecturing in the low-residency MFA program at St. Francis College.
James's writing is characterized by polyphonic narrative structures, authentic dialect variations, and an unsparing examination of systemic violence, sexuality, and power dynamics. His prose frequently incorporates multiple distinct narrative voices to present contested histories from contrasting perspectives, avoiding singular authoritative interpretations. Drawing influence from post-colonial literature, comic book lore, and regional folklore, his work bridges historical realism and mythic world-building while maintaining a steady focus on political conflict, human resilience, and community trauma.
2 books in catalog
Spanning historical fiction, epic fantasy, and contemporary drama, Jamaican narrative literature reached a milestone when the 2015 Man Booker Prize went to a sprawling, multi-voiced novel centered around the 1976 assassination attempt on Bob Marley. Marlon James became the first Jamaican author to receive the prestigious award for A Brief History of Seven Killings, establishing an expansive body of work that blends rigorous historical exploration with complex oral storytelling techniques.
From haunting historical narratives set during Caribbean slavery to African mythological fantasy sagas like Black Leopard, Red Wolf, his fiction frequently investigates power, violence, and marginalized identities through intricate multi-perspective structures.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, on November 24, 1970, James grew up in a household where his mother worked as a police detective, an environment that early on exposed him to complex investigative narratives and police reporting. He published his debut novel, John Crow's Devil, in 2005, gaining recognition as a finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. He followed this with his 2009 historical novel The Book of Night Women, which depicts a women's slave revolt on a Jamaican sugar plantation. The novel won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Minnesota Book Award while placing as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the NAACP Image Award.
Following the international success of A Brief History of Seven Killings, James expanded into epic fantasy with the Dark Star trilogy, drawing heavily on African mythology and folklore. Beyond prose fiction, he wrote the television limited series Get Millie Black. James currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has taught literature and creative writing as a faculty member at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in addition to lecturing in the low-residency MFA program at St. Francis College.
James's writing is characterized by polyphonic narrative structures, authentic dialect variations, and an unsparing examination of systemic violence, sexuality, and power dynamics. His prose frequently incorporates multiple distinct narrative voices to present contested histories from contrasting perspectives, avoiding singular authoritative interpretations. Drawing influence from post-colonial literature, comic book lore, and regional folklore, his work bridges historical realism and mythic world-building while maintaining a steady focus on political conflict, human resilience, and community trauma.
