A Brief History of Seven Killings

By: Marlon James

Narrated by: Robertson Dean, Cherise Boothe, Dwight Bacquie, Ryan Anderson, Jonathan McClain, Robert Younis, Thom Rivera, Various

Winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

On 3 December 1976, just weeks before Bob Marley was to play the Smile Jamaica Concert to ease political tensions, seven gunmen from West Kingston stormed his house.

Marley survived and went on to perform at the free concert. Not a lot was recorded about the fate of the seven gunmen, but much has been said, whispered and sung about in the streets of West Kingston.

©2014 Marlon James (P)2014 HighBridge

Critic reviews

"Vast and teeming...a vivid novel that deserves all the praise it has received." ( Sunday Telegraph)

"This seething, hot, violent, action-packed novel is enormous in every sense...the ambition is huge, but [James] pulls it off with huge style, confidence, imagination and wit.... Extraordinary." ( The Times)

"The most original novel I’ve read in years. A haunting, incendiary work." (Irvine Welsh)

This is what Audible is for

A really interesting book made even better by the excellent performance of the cast. It might be my favourite Audible listen.

All over the place

I understand the concept with multiple story lines slowly converging etc and I went in with an open mind, knowingly, but still struggled and got frustrated. It's only when I decided to 'let go' of understanding everything and not mind missing out on chunks of the story here and there that I finally settled into a rhythm and finished it.

Absolutely amazing story AND narration

Some of the best reading I have ever heard. The story is brilliant in itself but the narrators bring it to another level. It's was like listening to seasoned actors reading for a play. Never heard any audiobook quite like this one.

Great story telling

Great story. Well knit together. The most interesting thing that stood out for me was how the story revealed itself through conversation and not explicit descriptions. Some very interesting characters although Nina Burgess' neuroticism got a bit testing at one stage.

The accents were mostly great, even when they weren't meant to be.

Main criticism is the number of re-recordings - all at a different pitch which the really drew attention to the method and not the story.

Still, not a terrible way to spend 26 hours.

narration was excellent

The story was very engaging. The narrators really did well displaying the emotion and accents