John Crow's Devil

The ferocious energy of Marlon James's prose, the first sign of the literary genius that the Booker judges later recognized in A Brief History of Seven Killings, is immediately evident in this debut novel, which summons into being the Jamaican village of Gibbeah, a community put to the scourge by conflict between two rival preachers. With its rich language and biblical cadence, John Crow's Devil is a Miltonic epic of unrelenting spiritual darkness, but with James's ear for dialogue and knack for earthy humor it flashes with light on a human level. Rarely has a writer's career been announced with a trumpet blast this pure and powerful.