Marlon James with Nihal Arthanayake on The Penguin Podcast

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

'Black Leopard, Red Wolf is the kind of novel I never realized I was missing until I read it. A dangerous, hallucinatory, ancient Africa, which becomes a fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made, with language as powerful as Angela Carter's. I cannot wait for the next installment' Neil Gaiman

'The child is dead. There is nothing left to know.'

Tracker is a hunter, known throughout the thirteen kingdoms as one who has a nose - and he always works alone. But he breaks his own rule when, hired to find a lost child, he finds himself part of a group of hunters all searching for the same boy. Each of these companions is stranger and more dangerous than the last, from a giant to a witch to a shape-shifting Leopard, and each has secrets of their own.

As the mismatched gang follow the boy's scent from perfumed citadels to infested rivers to the enchanted darklands and beyond, set upon at every turn by creatures intent on destroying them, Tracker starts to wonder: who really is this mysterious boy? Why do so many people want to stop him being found? And, most important of all, who is telling the truth and who is lying?

Black Leopard, Red Wolf is the first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star Trilogy.

'A game-changing modern fantasy classic' Financial Times

'Complex, lyrical, moving and furiously gripping... This new book will propel James into a new galaxy of literary stardom' Observer