A tale inspired by the 1976 attempted assassination of Bob Marley spans decades and continents to explore the experiences of journalists, drug dealers, killers, and ghosts against a backdrop of social and political turmoil.

What we can say without doubt is that no one was bored by A Brief History of Seven Killings. The novel is a fast-paced and vivid story about violent gangs working for political parties in Jamaica, and the way the flows of violence and power affect the lives of the characters. The book is beautifully written, exploring characters as broad as a thinly veiled Bob Marley meditating on his career and role in society to a coked-up teenager betrayed by his gang after an assassin. The variety of voices and the care put into the Jamaican and NYC settings is very powerful. The novel is also very brutal -- the killings of the title (and seven is a gross underestimation) are rendered in uncompromising ways, and the gangster characters are as callous and arbitrary as you would expect. Marlon's decision not to pull any punches turned off some NUBClubbers who found the book too intense, but those of us who made it to the end through the ride was infectious. There are just so many good depicions in the book -- Weeper's homosexuality and drug abuse, Nina's arc of abuse and escape, the halting steps of progress in the politics undercut by violence, even the final scenes between the journalist Alex and Eubie, the final gangster standing -- there are just so many good stories and rich characters threaded through the novel. So, if you can stomach a story that gives you a full serving of gang brutality, A Brief History of Seven Killings is a quite frankly amazing novel about the intersections of power, struggle, and escape.