The Book of Night Women

By James, Marlon

Publishers Summary:
The Book of Night Women is a sweeping, startling novel, a true tour de force of both voice and storytelling. It is the story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century. Even at her birth, the slave women around her recognize a dark power that they—and she—will come to both revere and fear. The Night Women, as they call themselves, have long been plotting a slave revolt, and as Lilith comes of age and reveals the extent of her power, they see her as the key to their plans. But when she begins to understand her own feelings and desires and identity, Lilith starts to push at the edges of what is imaginable for the life of a slave woman in Jamaica, and risks becoming the conspiracy’s weak link. Lilith’s story overflows with high drama and heartbreak, and life on the plantation is rife with dangerous secrets, unspoken jealousies, inhuman violence, and very human emotion—between slave and master, between slave and overseer, and among the slaves themselves. Lilith finds herself at the heart of it all. And all of it told in one of the boldest literary voices to grace the page recently—and the secret of that voice is one of the book’s most intriguing mysteries.

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ISBN
978-1-59448-857-3
Publisher
Riverhead Hardcover


REVIEWS

Library Journal

Reviewed on February 15, 2009

Lilith, the central character in James's story of slave life in 19th-century Jamaica, is a green-eyed beauty who kills the first slave driver who tries to rape her. This catches the attention of the Night Women, a secret society planning to burn down the plantation and murder its white owners. But in Jamaica it is never simply a question of black against white. There are deep ethnic tensions among the different A...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

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