“Booker” for reggae and Bob Marley – BBC

This year could go down in history of the Booker Prize. For the first time in the history of the former chief of the British, and now the main English-language literary award winning writer seriously claimed from the United States. Bookmakers were so confident that will be the winner of the American Chania Yanagihara that rate it adopted a rate of 1/1 – make sure this was not possible. In reality, it turned out that the Booker committee is guided by anything but not assumptions betting brokers.

Booker Prize Laureate for Literature in 2015 became the novel “A Brief History of the seven murders” Jamaican writer Marlon James.

The first Jamaican winner “Booker” was £ 50 thousand. (about $ 76 thousand.). However, Americans can celebrate, too. James, who is now 45 years old, although born and raised in Jamaica, but was educated at the college McAllister (Minnesota) and have his debut novel – the story of the female slaves at the beginning of the XIX century in Jamaica, “The Book of Night Women» (The Book of Night Women, 2009) – entered the shortlisted range of US literary critics.

«A Brief History of the seven murders” – the third book of James, and she also reached the final of the US Critics Circle awards. It deals with the attempted murder of musician Bob Marley in the late 1970s – it is a historical event (Marley in those years, became interested in politics and was wounded had sent a killer), but not in the form set out in the novel. However, “A Brief History …” in one episode does not stop, and exploring several decades of political life in Jamaica, including the drug war in New York City of the 1980s and changes on the island in the 1990s.

In a review The New York Times Book of James is compared on the effect of the film “The thorny path» (The Harder They Come, 1972) – Crime Story director Perry Hentzel, which has done much to popularize reggae music throughout the world, including due to the fact that the title role in the movie performed the then star of this style of Jimmy Cliff. But “A Brief History …, according to Michiko Kakutani browser edition, looks like a remake of this film, shot by Quentin Tarantino scripted by Oliver Stone and William Faulkner, who wrote the soundtrack to be Bob Marley.

Yes, and filmmakers have become interested in it: in the summer of this year, the TV channel HBO bought the rights to adaptation of “A Brief History of …».

Date premiere, though not named, but now, most likely, this will be no problems.

As for the rivals James shortlisted for the Booker Prize, among them it was another American – writer Anne Tyler’s novel “Blue coil» (A Spool of Blue Thread). Other competitors winner “Booker” was the British Tom McCarthy (“Satin Island”) and Sanjeev Sah’ot (“Year shoots”) and Shigozi Obioma Nigeria (“Fishermen”). According to bookmakers, James held among the six finalists in third place – it put 7/2. The ceremony, taking the novel of the hands of Camilla Duchess of Cornwall, the writer said that was not so confident of victory that he did not prepared a speech of welcome.