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Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Taschenbuch
2020 Penguin Us; Riverhead Books
640 Seiten; 5 MAPS T/O; 230 mm x 152 mm
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2018-8

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Praise for Black Leopard, Red Wolf:

Gripping, action-packed The literary equivalent of a Marvel Comics universe filled with dizzying, magpie references to old movies and recent TV, ancient myths and classic comic books, and fused into something new and startling by his gifts for language and sheer inventiveness. Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

No novel this year was as intoxicated by the pleasures and possibilities of storytelling as this bloody, bawdy, profane, deliriously overstuffed work of high fantasy. The first part of a planned trilogy, Marlon James s book already boasts more swagger and invention than most multivolume epics dragging toward their 10th installment. The Wall Street Journal, Best Books of 2019

The first volume of a promised trilogy, a fabulist reimagining of Africa, with inevitable echoes of Tolkien, George R.R. Martin and Black Panther, but highly original, its language surging with power, its imagination all-encompassing. . . . Marlon is a writer who must be read. Salman Rushdie, TIME

James visions don t jettison you from reality so much as they trap you in his mad-genius, mercurial mind. . . . Drenched in African myth and folklore, and set in an astonishingly realized pre-colonized sub-Saharan region, Black Leopard crawls with creatures and erects kingdoms unlike any I ve read. . . . This is a revolutionary book. Entertainment Weekly

Marlon James is one of those novelists who aren t afraid to give a performance, to change the states of language from viscous to gushing to grand, to get all the way inside the people he s created... [Black Leopard, Red Wolf] looks like another great, big tale of death, murder and mystery but more mystically fantastical... Not only does this book come with a hefty cast of characters (like Seven Killings), there are also shape shifters, fairies, trolls, and, apparently, a map. The map might be handy. But it might be the opposite of why you come to James to get lost in him. The New York Times

Fantasy fiction gets a shot of adrenaline. Newsday

Stand aside, Beowulf. There s a new epic hero slashing his way into our hearts, and we may never get all the blood off our hands. . . . James is clear-cutting space for a whole new kingdom. Black Leopard, Red Wolf, the first spectacular volume of a planned trilogy, rises up from the mists of time, glistening like viscera. James has spun an African fantasy as vibrant, complex and haunting as any Western mythology, and nobody who survives reading this book will ever forget it. That thunder you hear is the jealous rage of Olympian gods. . . . Ocean s Eleven has got nothing on this ensemble. Washington Post

Black Leopard, Red Wolf is bawdy (OK, filthy), lyrical, poignant, violent (sometimes hyperviolent), riotous, funny (filthily hilarious), complex, mysterious, and always under tight and exquisite control A world that is both fresh and beautifully realized .Absolutely brilliant. LA Times

James is a professed fantasy nerd, so Black Leopard, Red Wolf will certainly appeal to fans of all the well-acknowledged authors with at least two initials George R.R. Martin, J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, etc. But if you ve read James 2014 novel A Brief History of Seven Killings (decidedly not a sci-fi or fantasy book but a 700-page world-building epic about the attempted assassination of Bob Marley), you ll drag yourself to the midnight queue to buy Black Leopard regardless of the whole Game of Thrones selling point. Huffington Post

Black Leopard, Red Wolf is the kind of novel I never realized I was missing until I read it. A dangerous, hallucinatory, ancient Africa, which becomes a fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made, with language as powerful as Angela Carter's. It's as deep and crafty as Gene Wolfe, bloodier than Robert E. Howard, and all Marlon James. It's something very new that feels old, in the best way. I cannot wait for the next installment. Neil Gaiman

This book begins like a fever dream and merges into world upon world of deadly fairy tales rich with political magic. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is a fabulous cascade of storytelling. Sink right in. I guarantee you will be swept downstream. Louise Erdrich The novel teems with nightmares: devils, witches, giants, shape-shifters, haunted woods, magic portals. It s terrifying, sensual, hard to follow but somehow indelible, too. Vogue
Black Leopard, Red Wolf aims to be an event, and to counter the dominant impression of the genre it inhabits. . . . Black Leopard delivers some genre-specific satisfactions: the fight scenes are choreographed with comic-book wit . . . But it deliberately upends others. When I first saw the news that James was writing a fantasy trilogy, I had assumed that, after reaching the pinnacle of critical acclaim, with the Booker, he was pivoting to the land of the straightforward best-seller. . . . Instead, he d written not just an African fantasy novel but an African fantasy novel that is literary and labyrinthine to an almost combative degree. The New Yorker

He s produced a sprawling fantasy novel set in a dark-age Africa of witches, spirits, dazzling imperial citadels and impenetrable forests. In a genre dominated by imagery derived from the European middle ages, Black Leopard, Red Wolf feels new and exciting. Wall Street Journal

A miracle... If Charles R. Saunders Imaro series opened the door to new ways of telling epic fantasy, and N.K. Jemisin s Inheritance trilogy leapt over the threshold, then Marlon James Black Leopard, Red Wolf just ripped the whole damn door off its hinges. Tor

A sprawling, epic fantasy... Fuses mythology, fantasy, and African history into a sensual, psychological triumph. Esquire

Like the best fantasy, like the best literary fiction, like the best art period, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is uncanny. Boston Globe

Black Leopard, Red Wolf [will] surely redefine fantasy for many years to come. Houston Chronicle

A standard-bearer for future fantasies. Minneapolis Star Tribune

This is the kind of immersive fantasy saga that develops a devoted following, an impressive display of inspired storytelling that s only just getting started. San Francisco Chronicle

Perhaps no other contemporary fiction writer takes such risks and uses such provocative, sensual descriptions as James (who masterfully mixes in smells and sounds as well as sights to build a world). Interview Magazine What marks James s tale as his own is the wonder evoked through descriptive, unrelenting prose along with a focus on a distinct mythology cobbled from history and folk tale. The propulsive narrative has already been optioned by Michael B Jordan, so expect to see this one coming to screens fairly soon. The Guardian

James' sensual, beautifully rendered prose and sweeping, precisely detailed narrative cast their own transfixing spell upon the reader. He not only brings a fresh multicultural perspective to a grand fantasy subgenre, but also broadens the genre's psychological and metaphysical possibilities. If this first volume is any indication, James' trilogy could become one of the most talked-about and influential adventure epics since George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire was transformed into Game of Thrones. Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Langtext
One of TIME s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time

Winner of the L.A. Times Ray Bradbury Prize

Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award

The New York Times Bestseller

Named a Best Book of 2019 by The Wall Street Journal, TIME, NPR, GQ, Vogue, and The Washington Post

"A fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made." --Neil Gaiman

"Gripping, action-packed....The literary equivalent of a Marvel Comics universe." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

The epic novel from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings

In the stunning first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child.

Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.

As Tracker follows the boy's scent--from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers--he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying?

Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that's come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both.

Beschreibung für Leser
Nominiert: National Book Award, 2019

ONE

The child is dead. There is nothing left to know.
I hear there is a queen in the south who kills the man who brings her bad news. So when I give word of the boy s death, do I write my own death with it? Truth eats lies just as the crocodile eats the moon, and yet my witness is the same today as it will be tomorrow. No, I did not kill him. Though I may have wanted him dead. Craved for it the way a glutton craves goat flesh. Oh, to draw a bow and fire it through his black heart and watch it explode black blood, and to watch his eyes for when they stop blinking, when they look but stop seeing, and to listen for his voice croaking and hear his chest heave in a death rattle saying, Look, my wretched spirit leaves this most wretched of bodies, and to smile at such tidings and dance at such a loss. Yes, I glut at the conceit of it. But no, I did not kill him.
Bi oju ri enu a pam o.
Not everything the eye sees should be spoken by the mouth.
This cell is larger than the one before. I smell the dried blood of executed men; I hear their ghosts still screaming. Your bread carries weevils, and your water carries the piss of ten and two guards and the goat they fuck for sport. Shall I give you a story?
I am just a man who some have called a wolf. The child is dead. I know the old woman brings you different news. Call him murderer, she says. Even though my only sorrow is that I did not kill her. The redheaded one said the child s head was infested with devils. If you believe in devils. I believe in bad blood. You look like a man who has never shed blood. And yet blood sticks between your fingers. A boy you circumcised, a young girl too small for your big . . . Look how that thrills you. Look at you.
I will give you a story.
It begins with a Leopard. And a witch.
Grand Inquisitor. Fetish priest.
No, you will not call for the guards.
My mouth might say too much before they club it shut.
Regard yourself. A man with two hundred cows who delights in a patch of boy skin and the koo of a girl who should be no man s woman. Because that is what you seek, is it not? A dark little thing that cannot be found in thirty sacks of gold or two hundred cows or two hundred wives. Something that you have lost no, it was taken from you. That light, you see it and you want it not light from the sun, or from the thunder god in the night sky, but light with no blemish, light in a boy who has no knowledge of women, a girl you bought for marriage, not because you need a wife, for you have two hun- dred cows, but a wife you can tear open, because you search for it in holes, black holes, wet holes, undergrown holes for the light that vampires look for, and you will have it, you will dress it up in ceremony, circumcision for the boy, consummation for the girl, and when they shed blood, and spit, and sperm and piss you leave it all on your skin, to go to the iroko tree and use any hole you find.
The child is dead, and so is everyone.
I walked for days, through swarms of flies in the Blood Swamp and skin- slicing rocks in salt plains, through day and night. I walked as far south as Omororo and did not know or care. Men detained me as a beggar, took me for a thief, tortured me as a traitor, and when news of the dead child reached your kingdom, arrested me as a murderer. Did you know there were five men in my cell? Four nights ago. The scarf around my neck belongs to the only man who left on two feet. He might even see from his right eye again one day.
The other four. Make record as I have said it.
Old men say night is a fool. It will not judge, but whatever comes it will not warn. The first came for my bed. I woke up to my own death rattle, and it was a man, crushing my throat. Shorter than an Ogo, but taller than a horse. Smelled like he butchered a goat. Grabbed me by the neck and hoisted me up in the air while the other men kept qui

Marlon James was born in Jamaica in 1970. He is the author of the New York Times-bestseller Black Leopard, Red Wolf, which was a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction in 2019. His novel A Brief History of Seven Killings won the 2015 Man Booker Prize. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for fiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction, and the Minnesota Book Award. It was also a New York Times Notable Book. James is also the author of The Book of Night Women, which won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Minnesota Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction and an NAACP Image Award. His first novel, John Crow s Devil, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and was a New York Times Editors Choice. James divides his time between Minnesota and New York.