Marlon James, a past student of Wolmer’s Boys, is the first Jamaican writer to win the Man Booker Prize. André Wright, in a Guardian comment of 15 October 2015, wrote that James “attended Wolmer’s Boys, one of Kingston’s prestigious boys’ schools.” The Jamaica Gleaner of 30 March 2016, reporting his Silver Musgrave Medal at the Institute of Jamaica, called him “the past student of Wolmer’s Boys School and the University of the” West Indies. The Governor-General’s Wolmer’s Day proclamation, as the Gleaner printed it on 20 May 2019 and again on 24 May 2024, named him among the schools’ contribution to the creative arts.

Alison Flood, in the Guardian of 13 October 2015, recorded the win for A Brief History of Seven Killings: James, then 44 and living in Minneapolis, took the £50,000 prize at London’s Guildhall on a unanimous decision. The Booker site describes a 1976 Jamaica in which seven gunmen storm Bob Marley’s house; the singer survives. James dedicated the win to his late father and called the book “a novel of exile.”

Kei Miller, reviewing the novel in the Guardian of 10 December 2014, placed it as James’s third book, after John Crow’s Devil and The Book of Night Women. The day after the Booker, Miller wrote that the win was “the first Man Booker prizewinner from the island.” Wright added that James has an English degree from the University of the West Indies.

The Booker Prizes author page records further work: the American Book Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Award for A Brief History of Seven Killings; Black Leopard, Red Wolf; Moon Witch, Spider King; the HBO / Channel 4 series Get Millie Black. It names him a professor at Macalester College in St Paul. The Disappearers was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2026 — a longlist, not a second win.

Sources

Sources: The Guardian, André Wright, 15 October 2015; The Guardian, Alison Flood, 13 October 2015; Jamaica Gleaner, Marlon James receives official Musgrave Silver Medal, 30 March 2016; The Booker Prizes, Marlon James, author page.