A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

 

An absorbing, brutal novel about Jamaican Drug Gangs and Bob Marley's murder.  I hated it at the start but by the end I thought what an amazing book!

It's a really fascinating story, well-researched and well-conceived by the Jamaican author Marlon James. It combines politics, gang violence, drug wars, journalism, and the CIA.


There's lots of obscene language, much of it in Jamaican patois which is quite interesting to read.
It is quite a challenging book to read because it spans several timelines and locations, and a large and varying cast of characters.
Each chapter is told from the point of view of a different characters which at times I found confusing.Marlon James does helpfully provide the reader with a list of characters at the start, but because I was reading it on my kindle it was hard to refer to.