Book of Night Women

Marlon James was born in Jamaica. He is the author of John Crow's Devil (Oneworld, 2015), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and The Book of Night Women (Oneworld, 2009), which won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Minnesota Book Award and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction. His third novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings (Oneworld 2014), won the Man Booker Prize in 2015, the American Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Fiction Prize, and was a finalist for the International Dublin Literary Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His short fiction and non-fiction has appeared in Esquire and Granta. He is currently the Writer-in-Residence and Associate Professor of English at Macalester College, Minnesota, USA.

A startling, hard-edged dissection of slavery and a tour de force of both voice and storytelling

'A story of such depth and humanity that you'll want to spend hours picking apart the nuances even as you recover emotionally from this wrenching read.' Vogue

By the Man Booker-winning author Marlon James, this is the powerful story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century. Even at her birth, the Night Women - a clandestine council of fierce slaves plotting an island-wide revolt - recognize a dark force in her that they treat with both reverence and fear. But as Lilith comes of age and begins to understand her own feelings and identity, she dares to push at the edges of what is imaginable for the life of a slave woman. And as rebellions simmer and unspoken jealousies intensify, Lilith's powers and sense of purpose threaten not just her own destiny, but the destinies of all the slave women in Jamaica.

A startling, hard-edged dissection of slavery and a tour de force of both voice and storytelling