Jamaican Marlon James' Bob Marley novel wins prize...

Author Marlon James poses on stage at he Royal Festival Hall in London. Photo: AP

Author Marlon James during an interview with host Seth Meyers on Late Night with Seth Meyers. Photo: NBC

London - Marlon James was named as the first Jamaican winner of the Man Booker Prize for fiction on

Tuesday for his reggae- and drug-infused novel A Brief History of Seven Killings inspired by an attempt to kill reggae star Bob Marley in 1976.

The 686-page novel, which uses Jamaican patois, Harlem slang and liberal doses of scatological language, tells the story of a gang of cocaine-fuelled ghetto kids armed with automatic weapons who tried but failed to kill Marley in the Jamaican capital Kingston before he gave a peace concert.

"The excitement of the book kept coming, I think, and we just felt it didn't flag, and on re-reading it just got better," author and academic Michael Wood, chairman of the five-person panel of judges, told reporters.

"This book is startling in its range of voices and registers, running from the patois of the street posse to The Book of Revelation," Wood said in a statement.

"It is a representation of political times and places, from the CIA intervention in Jamaica to the early years of crack gangs in New York and Miami."

The panel selected the third novel by James, 44, who now lives in Minneapolis and teaches writing, from a shortlist of six titles.

James has been quoted, in an online interview with the Gawker Review of Books website, as saying the book breaks a lot of the rules he teaches his students at Macalester College in St Paul.

The prize, which in its 47-year history previously has gone to Salman Rushdie, Hilary Mantel, Margaret Atwood and J.M. Coetzee, carries a top cash award of £50,000 ($105,000), but more importantly can be a huge shot in the arm for book sales.

Reuters