An odd message accompanied the delivery of Marlon James’s novel
A Brief History of Seven Killings: “Good luck, my friend — it’s 669 pages!” Actually, it’s 688 pages. It’s also brilliant. James is in town as part of the
Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series, along with Cristina Henriquez. The story of an attempted assassination of Jamaican musician Bob Marley in 1976, Seven Killings gives voice to an array of characters — a Rolling Stone reporter, CIA agents, corrupt cops, ambitious politicians, drug dealers, gang members, children of the Kingston ghettos and a few ghosts. Most of them relate their stories in colorful, syncopated Jamaican patois.
Interestingly, famed reggae musician Marley, called simply the Singer in the narrative, isn’t the focus of Seven Killings. Instead, James concentrates on the people around Marley, an eclectic cast of Everymans. Using the assassination attempt as an entry into -Jamaican culture and politics, James examines not Marley but the complicated, contradictory world that produced him and his music.
7:30 p.m. Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas. For information, visit inprinthouston.org. $5.
Mon., April 20, 7:30 p.m., 2015