Thursday, January 29, 2009

The Night Women are Coming

New from Jamaican writer Marlon James, whose debut John Crow's Devil almost singlehandedly brought J'can letters into the 21st Century, comes The Book of Night Women.

The Amazon blurb describes it as "a sweeping, startling novel, a true tour de force of both voice and storytelling."

It tells the story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century. Even at her birth, the slave women around her recognize a dark power that they—and she—will come to both revere and fear.

The Night Women, as they call themselves, have long been plotting a slave revolt, and as Lilith comes of age and reveals the extent of her power, they see her as the key to their plans. But when she begins to understand her own feelings and desires and identity, Lilith starts to push at the edges of what is imaginable for the life of a slave woman in Jamaica, and risks becoming the conspiracy’s weak link.

Lilith’s story overflows with high drama and heartbreak, and life on the plantation is rife with dangerous secrets, unspoken jealousies, inhuman violence, and very human emotion—between slave and master, between slave and overseer, and among the slaves themselves.

Night Women is avaialble as of Feb 19

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