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Augustown
Kei Miller
Novel, 2016
Kingston's Augustown community in 1982, where Rastafari history, class prejudice and oral storytelling shape a boy's experience.
Books by country North America
Books set in Jamaica
Seven books by writers from Jamaica, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with Augustown and A Brief History of Seven Killings.
About the literature of Jamaica
Marlon James won the Booker Prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, a many-voiced novel of 1970s Kingston built around the attempt on Bob Marley's life. Roger Mais's Brother Man is set in a Kingston yard, around a gentle cobbler and healer, and Kei Miller's Augustown weaves the legend of a preacher who said he could fly into a boy's life in 1982.
Jamaican writing moves between standard English and Jamaican Patois, and draws on a strong oral culture of storytelling, song and spoken poetry. Many of its writers have written about home from abroad, among them Claude McKay, a figure of the Harlem Renaissance, whose Banana Bottom follows a young woman returning from England to village life in the early twentieth century.
By writers from Jamaica
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A Brief History of Seven Killings
Marlon James
Novel, 2014
Kingston's 1970s political violence, garrison communities and the attempt on Bob Marley's life, told through many Jamaican voices and patois.
The Book of Night Women
Marlon James
Novel, 2009
A plantation-era story of enslaved women plotting rebellion on a Jamaican sugar estate, steeped in the brutality and language of slavery.
Banana Bottom
Claude McKay
Novel, 1933
Rural Jamaica in the early twentieth century, where a young woman returns from Europe and navigates peasant culture, religion and class.
Brother Man
Roger Mais
Novel, 1954
Kingston's Depression-era slum yards and Rastafari beginnings, rendered with vivid, poetic realism.
The Last Warner Woman
Kei Miller
Novel, 2010
A Jamaican woman with prophetic powers is interrogated by an English scientist, exploring colonial legacies, folk belief and rural life.
A House for Miss Pauline
Diana McCaulay
Novel, 2020
A contemporary Jamaican novel in which an older woman's house and her ties to family and neighbours show class, land and everyday life.
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