The Book of Night Women
SynopsisPlot
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 they see her as the key to their plans. But when she begins to understand her own feelings, desires, and identity, Lilith starts to push at the edges of what is imaginable for the life of a slave woman and risks becoming the conspiracy's weak link.
Story
About this book
The Book of Night Women by Marlon James is set on a Jamaican sugar plantation in the late eighteenth century. It follows Lilith, a young woman born into slavery whose arrival is marked by something the older enslaved women around her recognize as unusual and unsettling. As Lilith grows up on the plantation, she draws the attention of a secret group who call themselves the Night Women, a circle of enslaved women quietly preparing a revolt against the plantation system that holds them.
The Night Women see Lilith as central to their plans, but Lilith is also forming her own sense of self. Her emerging desires and identity do not always align with the group's expectations, and this tension puts both Lilith and the conspiracy at risk. The novel traces the friction between collective resistance and individual will, set against the daily violence of plantation life in colonial Jamaica.
James writes the novel in a Jamaican Creole-inflected narrative voice that carries the rhythm and texture of the period and place. The story draws on the documented history of slave uprisings in Jamaica, where organized rebellions occurred repeatedly throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
