Description

A startling, hard-edged dissection of slavery and a tour de force of both voice and storytelling

By the Man Booker-winning author Marlon James, this is the powerful story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century. Even at her birth, the Night Women – a clandestine council of fierce slaves plotting an island-wide revolt – recognize a dark force in her that they treat with both reverence and fear. But as Lilith comes of age and begins to understand her own feelings and identity, she dares to push at the edges of what is imaginable for the life of a slave woman. And as rebellions simmer and unspoken jealousies intensify, Lilith’s powers and sense of purpose threaten not just her own destiny, but the destinies of all the slave women in Jamaica.

Publisher Review

'One of the most expanding, lyrical, relevant novels I will ever read.' * Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist * 'Both beautifully written and devastating.' -- New York Times 'It reads like Faulkner in another skin. It is a brave book. And like the best, and most dangerous of stories, it seems as if it was just waiting to be told.' -- Colum McCann, author of Zoli and Dancer 'An exquisite, haunting and beautiful novel... like the best of literature [it] deserves to be passed down hand to hand, generation to generation.' -- Dinaw Mengestu, author of The Beautiful Things 'An epic novel of late-18thcentury West Indian slavery, complete with all its carnage and brutishness, but one that, like a Toni Morrison novel, whispers rather than shouts its horrors.' -- Time Out