What is it with 2015 and genuinely interesting authors winning awards this year? Svetlana Alexievich earned her Nobel, and Marlon James claimed his Man Booker. 
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjUGX... 
 So what can I say about A Brief History of Seven Killings that isn't already in other reviews or the back blurb? This is above all a book with multiple voices, one which skips fluently from Jamaican patois to African-American vernacular c. 1980-1990 and a few Middle Americans trying to grapple with the former two. I was amused to see all the instances of code-switching between Jamaicans and New Yorkers. It's a great touch, to see how well James controls his use of language. Language becomes a tool of identity, something to shape and shed in an attempt to change one's personal identity, to leave behind the distinctive traces of the past. 
 The book, as you'd guess for a book set in drug wars, assassination attempts, and Caribbean slums, is violent. It is affecting. It's easy enough to make violence pornographic and overdo it, but James still makes it shocking, in detail and psychology. He takes a sly dig at exploitative journalism here too. 
 It's excellent stuff. Far be it from me to determine what 1970s Jamaica was 'really' like, but this is a convincing story of a place in the past I've never been to before. I look forward to reading more from the author.