John Crow's Devil: From the Man Booker prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings

By Marlon James

The debut novel of the winner of the Man Booker Prize 2015

Jamaica, 1957

On a day beginning with a bad omen – black vultures, known locally as John Crows, crash through the local church windows – a handsome and charismatic stranger drags the village preacher from his pulpit and takes over both church and congregation. Promising vengeance and damnation, he wastes no time delivering both, and in doing so starts a power struggle that sets the village of Gibbeah on a path to destruction.

With language as taut as classic works by Cormac McCarthy, and a richness reminiscent of early Toni Morrison, John Crow’s Devil is a terrifying and moving novel about religious mania, redemption, sexual obsession and the eternal struggle between the righteous and the wicked.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Release date: Sep 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781780748504

Marlon James

Marlon James was born in Jamaica. He is the author of John Crow’s Devil (Oneworld, 2015), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and The Book of Night Women (Oneworld, 2009), which won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Minnesota Book Award and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction. His third novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings (Oneworld 2014), won the Man Booker Prize in 2015, the American Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Fiction Prize, and was a finalist for the International Dublin Literary Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His short fiction and non-fiction has appeared in Esquire and Granta. He is currently the Writer-in-Residence and Associate Professor of English at Macalester College, Minnesota, USA.

Reviews for John Crow's Devil

[richardderus · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

PEARL RULE 9 (p74)I realized I need to leave the read behind here:"Shhh. Don't work your head about it too much. The Lord has forgiven me and as His faithful servant, I have forgiven Pastor Bligh. You know where he is?""Yes, Apostle.""Send him a message for me. Tell him that Apostle York says that he can come back."And here we go round the houses again. I liked the dialect that Author James uses in the story to delineate what everyone knows, versus what is being narrated:The plate was empty and refilled in minutes."Mind you choke," she said.The Widow appeared to smile but then she pushed her chair back into the dark before the {Rum} Pastor could confirm it. She ate nothing herself. Dinner was a noisy clutter of mouth sounds. Lips and gums slapping food with spit and teeth slicing, tearing, and chomping the whole thing down to paste, followed by the glorious gulp of a swallow.He was the only one doing the eating, so she must have been doing the watching. Women loved to watch men eat, he thought. It was the last blast of primal energy that the hunter-gatherer had left to show.***"Jeezus Christ! Him have fits!" said a man beside Bligh as he fell."Rahtid," said another."Unu fling this spoon in him mouth quick!" shouted the young bartender. "Bout him want bottle! You know say is a whole o Johnny Walker him go fi drink?""Him still a fits?""Is the Devil in him. Me read that in tha Bible," said the man nearest to Bligh, holding onto the spoon he had shoved in the Pastor's mouth.It's a technique used to make the story move and still retain the tang of Otherness this supernatural tale imparts. That's very effective, and to my mental ears very euphonious. I'm just not that deeply drawn in to the story. Rum Pastor Bligh's besetting sin is drink. I get it. Because I'm told explicitly why earlier in the story, I wasn't that interested in following his trajectory; because the very beginning is The End, I know where we're heading; and in the end, I just didn't feel like the view was worth the travail.Such a shame I didn't read this when it came out. I'd've liked it much better at forty-five than at sixty.

[abergsman-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A story with a touch of magical realism and a heavy dose of religious fervor. Set in the author's native Jamaica at some point in the 1950's, it is the story of the battle between two flawed individuals, each who try to take control of a small fictional town.

John Crow's Devil is an amazing first novel, with extremely interesting, well-developed characters. It's an interesting take on sin vs redemption. Neither the Rum Preacher or the Apostle are quite what they appear. It is easy to mock the townspeople of the fictional Gibbeah, but see if you can make it to the end of the story without being manipulated into looking at characters and actions in a particular way.

[josephj_530382 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Near perfect first novel set in Jamaica. Two reverends battle for the soul of fledgling Jamaican village in the late 1950's. James uses a voice that many readers may deem difficult to follow, at first, but really I found it quite easy to slip into the dialect that he implements. It is a fine specimen of terse literature that gets out of the story's way and takes the reader out of their comfort zone without ever letting the reader think about putting the book down.Highly recommended.