![]() ![]() The novel criss-crosses genres, from the classic trickster tropes, to repeated scenes of teleportation, to an empire in the sky with a grim dystopian core. ![]() People turn into animals, a god-butcher spies on the heroes in their dreams, white scientists grow flowers out of hair, and all of this is mixed with true horror, like the scenes that take place at a slave auction. Stories act as portals to other stories, and then become other stories still. ![]() Their reasons for seeking the boy are as varied as who they are: for money, to restore a royal lineage, or just for something to do. There’s Tracker, a runaway who seeks his lost people, only to reject them when he learns their truth there’s the shape-shifting leopard who is his best friend there’s a giant who is not a giant a compass that is a human infected with lightning and kept in a cage and a feminist separatist witch, whose line “Thank the gods for this man to tell us what we already know” is coming soon to a tote bag near you. Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Bond Street Books), Marlon James’s fourth novel and his follow-up to his Man Booker Prize-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings, is a Molotov cocktail through the window of the literary status quo: it’s a fantasy novel, the first in a trilogy, about a group of outsiders who go on a quest, crossing mythical African kingdoms to find a missing boy. ![]()
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