"A fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made." -Neil Gaiman Named a Best Book of 2019 by The Wall Street Journal, TIME, NPR, GQ, Vogue, and The Washington Post Times Ray Bradbury Prizeįinalist for the 2019 National Book Award One of TIME’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time Olivia Valenza, Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, WI This is a book to be GEEKED about, and I absolutely am.” James’ talent shines and his passion in this book is clear. Rather, it’s a walk off the edge of the Earth. You’ll get the journey you want from this fantasy, but it won’t be the same trip around the block.
The language, the beasts, the people-James’ writing is both brutal and beautiful. Lovingly crafted, it immediately steals you away from your world and steeps you in one of ancient yet familiar myth and magic. “ Black Leopard, Red Wolf is an amazing epic that launches from a familiar framework of the fantasy genre. Caleb Masters, Bookmarks, Winston-Salem, NC Summer 2020 Reading Group Indie Next List This is literary fantasy as you’ve never encountered it before and a truly original tale of love, loss, power, and identity.” Never has a magical world felt quite so otherworldly and yet frighteningly tactile at the same time. At turns hallucinatory, dreamlike, and nightmarish, Black Leopard, Red Wolf’s world envelops the reader in its stink, grime, sweat, and blood. James’tale set in a fantastical ancient Africa follows a hunter known only as Tracker as he trails the scent of a lost boy, meeting a shape-shifting leopard along the way. “Marlon James’ Black Leopard, Red Wolf is a shot across the bow of fantasy literature: bold, fresh, and filled with brutal wonder and endless imagination. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is indeed one of those stories that after reading the last line will leave the reader lost in thought for some time to come. Marlon James has woven together a collection of stories that is somewhat reminiscent of One Thousand and One Nights, albeit much more violent and sexual in nature, where most of the tales are connected to by the novel’s narrator, the wild and world-hardened “Tracker.” What completely took me by surprise was Marlon’s choice to make the subject of sexuality and identity deeply ingrained in this story’s foundation, managing to use the subject to both enhance the narrative and to engage the reader. I was taken aback when I first started Black Leopard, Red Wolf. What first began as a testimonial story similar to the likes of Edgar Allen Poe’s A Cask of Amontillado soon turned into a fantastical journey through grand landscapes and wild terrains of ancient Africa.
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