On December 3, 1976, two cars stop outside Bob Marley's house in Kingston, Jamaica. Seven guys with guns - or maybe eight? - get out and storm the singer's house, firing 56 shots in an attempt to assassinate him, but they fail. The perpetrators remained unknown and uncaptured.

Focusing on this event, Marlon James writes a story that is neither short nor only about seven murders. The story involves secret service agents, gangsters, drug dealers, politicians, hitmen, a journalist, a curious nurse, and the ghost of a murdered man who knows a lot...
And music, lots of music - how could it be otherwise, since we are in Jamaica, the land of reggae, rocksteady, and ska?

The author writes about all this, and more that is unsaid, in a masterful way and delivers a masterpiece that won the 2015 Man Booker Prize.

"A Brief History of Seven Killings" is, according to the New York Times, like a remake of "The Harder They Come," directed by Tarantino, but with a Bob Marley soundtrack and a script by Oliver Stone and William Faulkner...