Marlon James,
the 2015 winner of the Man Booker Prize for his novel, A Brief History of Seven
Killings, has spoken about his next project.
He is to
release an epic trilogy of fantasy-themed novels, partly inspired by his
admiration of Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and his interest in
African mythology.
The
46-year-old, gay writer was born and raised in Jamaica, but is now based in
Minneapolis, US. He was the second Caribbean writer to win the prestigious Man
Booker Prize when he scooped the accolade for 2014’s A Brief History.
He told Entertainment
Weekly that the idea for the trilogy came about after arguing with a
friend over the diversity of the casting in The Hobbit.
‘I remember
saying, “You know, if an Asian or a black hobbit came out of the Shire, nobody
would have cared. We would have just moved on.” And my friend said, “Well, Lord
of the Rings is all this British and Celtic mythology.”
‘And I said,
“Well, you know… Lord of the Rings isn’t real.” It just turned into
one of these arguments we have about diversity and inclusion.
‘It made me
realize that there was this huge universe of African history and mythology and
crazy stories, these fantastic beasts and so on, that was just waiting there.
‘And I’m a big
sci-fi geek—I love my Lord of the Rings, I love my Angela Carter and my
Dragonslayer. I think the argument ended with me saying, “You know what? Keep
your d— Hobbit.’
‘And it made me
start to think about the fantastic African epic traditions—some of the stories
I grew up with, like Anansi the Spider. I just realized that there’s this huge
pool of fantastic stories to draw from.
‘It’s sort of
like my being a scholar of African history and mythology, and my being a total
sci-fi/fantasy geek who rereads things like The Mists of Avalon, they just sort
of came together.’
Dark Star
trilogy
The’Dark Star’
trilogy will be published by Riverhead Books. The novels will be called Black
Leopard, Red Wolf; Moon Witch, Night Devil; The Boy and the Dark Star.
Each book will
follow a different character, which, according to the official summary, are, ‘locked
in a dungeon in the castle of a dying king, awaiting torture and trial for the
death of a child.
‘They were
three of eight mercenaries who had been hired to find the child; the search,
expected to take two months, took nine years. In the end, five of the eight
mercenaries, as well as the child, were dead.’
James said he
had begun to think about writing a trilogy because he enjoys book series
himself.
‘A lot of the
books I read, whether it’s fantasy or not, tend to be multiple. Like Game of
Thrones, which is still going, Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin, which is a huge, huge
influence on me. But also Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies — Hillary Mantel’s
Cromwell trilogy.’
He said he was
working to a strict deadline of having the first novel completed by the end of
2017. Publication will hopefully follow in the fall of 2018.
Cool! Thanks for the information. Naked hugs!
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