A review by stromberg
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

challenging dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

In spite of its well-crafted prose and remarkable ingenuity in building out its folkloric world, this novel never really reached me. It is composed of the sorts of elements I’d normally seek out in a book—unabashed formal complexities, an Enkidu-like protagonist, a lusty embrace of queerness, a “fabulist reimagining of Africa” (in the words of Salman Rushie’s blurb)—but in the end I am not the right reader for this story. I find it to be all id, all cruelty and orgiastic butchery and sexual atrocity, replicated in episode after episode (“this happened, then this, then this, then…”) until the nihilistic tedium of ever-iterating longueurs of caustic brutality numbs the senses. I receive the impression of an author so intoxicated by his powers of expression and invention that he neglects to tell a story. Again, the writing is finely done; I read with appreciation but not interest. Perhaps I am sorely missing the point.