Kingston Noir

"Kingston Noir subverts the simplistic sunshine/reggae/spliff-smoking image of Jamaica at almost every turn...The collection amply rewards the reader with a rich interplay of geographies and themes."
--The Los Angeles Times

"Kingston Noir goes darker and deeper than any before...the purest of noir, and the richest depictions of Jamaica."
--The Huffington Post

“Kingston Noir is an eclectic and gritty melange of tales that sears the imagination . . . Kingston Noir proves its worth as a quintessential piece of West Indian literature—rich, artistic, timeless, and above all, draped in unmistakable realism.”
--The Gleaner (Jamaica)

"Some of these stories are mysterious, some are straightforward, but all are dark. There isn’t a single light-hearted story in the bunch, which falls in line perfectly with the noir theme. Readers beware, there are some stories in this book that address the darkest parts of human nature: rape, torture, murder. It’s not for the faint of heart. However, they are all well-written and tap into the true underbelly of another culture."
--Examiner.com

Original stories by: Marlon James, Kwame Dawes, Patricia Powell, Colin Channer, Marcia Douglas, Leone Ross, Kei Miller, Christopher John Farley, Ian Thomson, Thomas Glave, and Chris Abani.

From Trench Town to Half Way Tree to Norbrook to Portmore and beyond, the stories of Kingston Noir shine light into the darkest corners of this fabled city. Joining award-winning Jamaican authors such as Marlon James, Leone Ross, and Thomas Glave are two "special guest" writers with no Jamaican lineage: Nigerian-born Chris Abani and British writer Ian Thomson. The menacing tone that runs through some of these stories is counterbalanced by the clever humor in others, such as Kei Miller's “White Gyal with a Camera,” who softens even the hardest of August Town’s gangsters; and Mr. Brown, the private investigator in Kwame Dawes’s story, who explains why his girth works to his advantage: "In Jamaica a woman like a big man. She can see he is prosperous, and that he can be in charge." Together, the outstanding tales in Kingston Noir comprise the best volume of short fiction ever to arise from the literary wellspring that is Jamaica.

Colin Channer: Colin Channer is a father, fiction writer, and occasional essayist. His books include the novel Waiting In Vain, a critic's choice selection of the Washington Post, and the novella The Girl With the Golden Shoes. His other writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Times Literary Supplement. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, he has lived in the U.S. since the early 1980s. He's the editor of the fiction anthology Iron Ballons, and coeditor with Kwame Dawes of the poetry anthology So Much Things to Say.