AlHijjah 30, 1436, October 14, 2015, SPA -- Jamaican writer Marlon James won the 2015 Man Booker Prize on Tuesday for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings, inspired by an attempted assassination of musician Bob Marley in 1976, dpa reported. Accepting the 50,000-pound (75,000-dollar) award at a ceremony in London, James paid tribute to the reggae music that inspired his novel. "The reggae singers Bob Marley and Peter Tosh were the first to recognize that the voice coming out our mouths was a legitimate voice for fiction and poetry," the BBC quoted him as saying. Winning was "so surreal ... so exciting, so humbling," James said, dedicating the prize to his late father for shaping his "literary sensibilities." Michael Wood, chairman of the judges for the prize, said the book was "startling in its range of voices and registers, running from the patois of the street posse to The Book of Revelation." "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," he said. "It is a crime novel that moves beyond the world of crime and takes us deep into a recent history we know far too little about." Wood predicted that James' fast-paced, 686-page epic novel "will come to be seen as a classic of our times." James, 44, who lives in the US city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, is the first Jamaican to win the 47-year-old prize. London-based One World Publications said it was "massively overjoyed" that James won the prize, while the Guardian called him an "uncompromising and exhilarating" Booker winner.
