Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy #1)

by Marlon James

Bi oju ri enu a pamo. Not everything the eye sees should be spoken by the mouth.

The first man was jealous of the first woman. Her lightning was too powerful,

screams and moans loud enough to wake up the dead. That man could never accept that the gods would gift the weaker woman with such riches, so before every girl becomes a woman, man sets up to steal it, cut it away, and throw it in the bush. But the gods put it there, hid it deep so that no man would have business going to find it. Man will pay for this. I have seen more than these

When people talk false, their words are muddy where they should be clear, clear where they should be muddy. Something that sounds like it might be true. But

If the gods created everything, was truth not just another creation?

A man alive is just a man in the way. Maybe

“And shit stink and piss rank and fool is fool, just like you.”

Before you see the monkey, the monkey has seen you.

“The hen doesn’t even know when she will be cooked so perhaps she should listen to the egg,”

“All but sky shits on me tonight.”

“Just like all you men of learning. Everything in the world cooks down to two. Either-or, if-then, yes-no, night-day, good-bad. You all believe in twos so much I wonder if any of you can count to three.”

In my lands night is where people do the evil to enemies they call friends in the day.

“White because even their skin rebel against their evil, for there is only so much vileness that your own skin can agree to. White like only the purest evil.

All children come from the mother’s will, not from mating with a father.

Every belief comes in two, which leads to a god two-sided. Vengeful and mad in his ways and takes his fury out on womenfolk.