Marlon James

Marlon James’s novel The Book of Night Women is set on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the turn of the 19th century. It’s about a rebellion led by a group of slaves. It is also the coming-of-age story of Lilith, the enslaved daughter of the plantation’s overseer, and her conflicted feelings about violence as retribution. James talks about his use of dialect in the novel and why dialect is still controversial among Jamaican writers.