Marlon James's Favorite Books
By Bookshop.org
By Bookshop.org
The author of A Brief History of Seven Killings; Black Leopard, Red Wolf; and more chose his ten favorite books for One Grand Books.
Shame
Salman Rushdie
$17.00 $15.81What Kafka gave Marquez—permission to write—Shame did for me. And like all electrifying experiences, at first it was just the shock that such things could be done with novels, that got to me.
Song of Solomon
Toni Morrison
$17.00 $15.81Three quarters of the way in, and Song of Solomon is merely one of the three best books I’ve ever read. But the last 60 pages are one of the most astonishing feats of writing I’ve ever read. I remember reading it standing up, almost in this fever, and so thoroughly believing the ending that I almost jumped off my balcony.
Pride and Prejudice (Revised)
Jane Austen
$9.00 $8.37Because nobody has ever been slyer with characters than Austen. It still blows my mind that her unsavory, and unfortunate characters (Mrs Bennett, Lady Catherine, Charlotte), are the only ones who truly know what time it is.
Tom Jones
Henry Fielding
$8.95 $8.32First book I ever read for school that I was sad to see end. Best plot of all time? Maybe, but too close to the top to merit serious argument.
Dogeaters
Jessica Hagedorn
$17.00 $15.81Possible the most brutally, hilariously accurate portrait of post colonial Jamaica I’ve ever read. And it’s a novel about the Philippines.
The Autumn of the Patriarch
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
$15.99 $14.87Picking a Marquez novel is a near impossible task. It’s too easy to just go with the obvious choice(s). But this is his most daring novel, and the labyrinthine twists and turns of each sentence demand undivided attention—so perfect for a desert island, then.
Beyond Palomar
Gilbert Hernandez
$18.99 $17.66I sometimes wonder if I’m the only person to realize that the collected Palomar stories, from one half of Los Bros Hernandez, adds up to the finest American novel of the past 30 years?
The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov and Christopher Conn Askew
$18.00 $16.74Nude vampires, a gun-toting talking black cat, and devil as ultimate party starter aside, the miracle of this novel is that every time you read it, it's a different book.