The Marvellous Equations of the Dread

A Novel in Bass Riddim

by Marcia Douglas

This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.

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Pub Date Jul 31 2018 | Archive Date Jun 30 2018

New Directions

General Fiction (Adult) | Multicultural Interest

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Description

“Is me—Bob. Bob Marley.” Reincarnated as homeless Fall-down man, Bob Marley sleeps in a clock tower built on the site of a lynching in Half Way Tree, Kingston. The ghosts of Marcus Garvey and King Edward VII are there too, drinking whiskey and playing solitaire. No one sees that Fall-down is Bob Marley, no one but his long-ago love, the deaf woman, Leenah, and, in the way of this otherworldly book, when Bob steps into the street each day, five years have passed. Jah ways are mysterious ways, from Kingston’s ghettoes to London, from Haile Selaisse’s Ethiopian palace and back to Jamaica, Marcia Douglas’s mythical reworking of three hundred years of violence is a ticket to the deep world of Rasta history. This amazing novel—in bass riddim—carries the reader on a voyage all the way to the gates of Zion.

Advance Praise

“A magical realist journey through the history of Rastafarianism, Bob Marley & Jamaica—not necessarily in that order. Rhapsodic, poetic, scripturally engaged and endlessly inventive. Not only is the electric atmosphere of Jamaica evoked with sensuousness, delicacy and love; so is the ‘dub-side,’ a studio yard just the other side of death, where Bob Marley and a toothless and lisping Halle Selassie discuss the relative merits of routes to Zion.” - Review 31

“A vast panorama of a small corner of Kingston, a musical novel where the music is reggae, a historical documentary set in the present: As the illustrious and anonymous living and dead materialize to reenact, retell, and undo their life stories, it’s impossible to resist reading these voices out loud, adding your own to this orchestrated hubbub.” - Eliot Weinberger

“A rollicking, music-rich, dream-filled, polyphonic tour through Jamaica’s past and present, both in this world and, on the 'dub-side,' beyond it, The Marvellous Equations of the Dread is a masterpiece of linguistic and narrative inventiveness, a contemporary literary marvel.” - John Keene

Available Editions

EDITION	Other Format
ISBN	9780811227865
PRICE	$16.95 (USD)
PAGES	304

The Marvellous Equations of the Dread

A Novel in Bass Riddim

by Marcia Douglas

This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.

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