Marlon James: `You have to risk going too far´
(The Guardian Culture News)

In 2015, James became the first Jamaican writer to win the Man Booker. His new novel is a hotly anticipated African fantasy epic and here he talks about loving the X-Men, coming out and writing about violenceIt´s two days before the US release of Marlon James´s much-hyped fourth novel, Black Leopard, Red Wolf and the prizewinning Jamaican author has an air of baffled, exhausted ebullience about him. He´s no stranger to critical success: he won the 2015 Man Booker prize for his violent, multi-voiced epic, A Brief History of Seven Killings. But it feels like this new book will propel James into a new galaxy of literary stardom.We´ve arranged to have lunch - on a balmy Sunday in early February - at the Commodore, a carefully shabby Williamsburg diner near his Brooklyn apartment. Brawnily broad-shouldered, his dreadlocked hair tied back in a ponytail, James has arrived before me. We´re shown to seats at the bar where low winter sun slants through the blinds on to the bar top. James tells me it feels like summer to him - he spends much of his time teaching creative writing at Macalester College in Minnesota - and as if to prove it asks the waiter for an Aperol spritz. Continue reading...