< At left, Jamaican author Marlon James prepares to sign a copy of his latest book, The Book of Night Women for a former teacher of Westwood High School in Trelawny, Miss Michelle Johnson at Wednesday’s (March 4) reading and book signing at the Borders Book store on K Street in Washington DC.

Jamaican author Marlon James, on Wednesday (March 4) launched his second novel – ‘The Book of Night Women’ at a reading and book signing at the Borders Book Store  on K Street in Washington DC.

THE BOOK OF NIGHT WOMEN is about bondage and freedom—how love subverts one and blindsides the other. It is about the form of slavery that existed in the West Indies—savage, shocking, and always on the brink of catastrophe, and it is about diabolical methods of control, but ultimately is it about the irrepressible, ardent, and ultimately victorious spirit of freedom.

Marlon James takes the perspective of a group of Jamaican slave women from two centuries ago to give readers entrée into a world at once known and unknown, with clear parallels to the American South, but also with its own characters and conditions, time and place.

Speaking at the book launch, Mr. James said that this book was quite unsual as it is written in Jamaican dialect. He said he was initially turned down by a British publisher as they wanted him to  modify the language. He however refused and went to an American publisher who accepted his original manuscript.

Marlon James was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1970. His first novel, John Crow’s Devil (2005), was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Commonwealth Prize, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice.James graduated from the University of the West Indies in 1991 with a degree in literature, and from Wilkes University in Pennsylvania in 2006 with a master’s in creative writing. His short fiction has appeared in the anthologies Iron Balloons, Bronx Noir, and Silent Voices, and his nonfiction has been published in the Caribbean Review of Books. He has taught at the Calabash International Literary Festival Workshop in Kingston and the Gotham Writers Workshop in New York City, and was a judge for the PEN Beyond Margins Award. Currently a professor of literature and creative writing at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, he divides his time among Jamaica, New York City, and the Twin Cities.

Derrick A. Scott
JIS Washington DC

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