From the Bookshelf of Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge…

A Brief History of Seven Killings

Marlon James

Start date: January 6, 2015

Discussion: 2015 Challenge Prompts

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2015 Challenge Prompts

Prompt 25: A book you were supposed to read in school but didn't
By Ann · 67 posts · 992 views

last updated Jan 17, 2023 03:51PM

Prompt 39: A book with magic
By Ann · 48 posts · 446 views

last updated Jan 02, 2019 05:46AM

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What Members Thought

Oct 21, 2016 Dana rated it really liked it

Shelves: lbc-book-club-1, listened-to

This is one that I wasn't sure I'd ever finish. The title is misleading in two ways--at 686 pages it's anything but brief, and there are far more than seven killings. (The source of the title is finally clarified toward the end.) The book is a fictional account of the attack on Bob Marley's house (referred to throughout only as "the singer") two days before he played a peace concert in Jamaica in 1976. But it goes far beyond that, from Jamaican gangs to CIA involvement in Jamaica and Latin Ameri ...more

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Oct 12, 2024 Julie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Wow! Powerful, stark, brutal, brilliant. This #chunkster shares a glimpse of Jamaica in the 60s-70s from multiple perspectives: a ghost, gangsters, journalists, the CIA, and a woman with various identities, following the story to NYC in the 80s. An epic examination of the impact that governments, criminals, and artists can have on a community that is just trying to get by. Dark and upsetting but worth it.

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