Daily Recco, January 28: Black Leopard Red Wolf is the African Game of Thrones
Black Leopard Red Wolf is like the Game of Thrones and Marvel universe rolled into one, peppered with local elements from Africa. A satisfying opening to a promising trilogy.
“Truth eats lies just as the crocodile eats away the moon,” writes 2015-Man Booker Prize-winning author Marlon James in the first page of the first book in a planned trilogy (The Dark Star Trilogy). On truth, he further says in the book, “Truth is truth and nothing you can do about it even if you hide it, or kill it, or even tell it. It was truth before you open your mouth and say, That there is a true thing.”
And seems to be the broad is the broad theme of the fantastic fantasy book, his latest novel — Black Leopard, Red Wolf (published in 2019). The truth and seeking it.
Drawing accounts heavily from African mythology (and history), the fantasy novel explores two fictional warring landscapes — the North Kingdom and the South Kingdom — the political tensions between the two, all in the paradigm of a tracking quest by the central character (known as Tracker) to find a mysterious boy who disappeared in the North Kingdom.
The account is Tracker’s perspective, narrated in the first person in flashbacks over the past nine years. Tracker’s journey and quest involve a shape-shifting man-animal (known as Leopard), a roof-walking night-demon “from an age before this age”, were-hyenas, assassins made of dust that telekinetically control masses, a blood-draining monster that turns victims into zombies filled with lightning. So the fans of fantasy can rejoice. The Tracker, the Moon Witch and the Boy are the only three left of the eight soldiers of fortune, who are on a mission to locate a missing boy. Of these, the Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter.
We are promised a Rashomon-style narration from the other two central characters — the Moon Witch and the Boy — as the trilogy progresses. There is fantasy (lots of it), there are references from history, streaks of mythology and the author’s very fertile imagination, and most importantly, there is a promise of a lot more of all the above as the trilogy unravels. It is like Marvel comics and Game of Thrones rolled into one and peppered with a lot more local elements, set in Africa.
The author’s previous and third novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, won the Man Booker Prize in 2015 and became a best-seller.
If you are a fantasy buff, this is your go-to for this weekend. If you are not, read Black Leopard, Red Wolf and become one. Either way, read it.