10 awesome science fiction and fantasy books by Black authors

7. Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

On the complete other end of the spectrum, we have Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James. This is a unique one, because unlike many of the other authors here, Marlon James doesn’t really specialize in fantasy or science fiction. His most famous book, A Brief History of Seven Killings, is an examination of the attempted assassination of Bob Marley, and the fallout on Jamaica’s development as a country.

By contrast, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is a fantasy with some of the sensibilities of a more typical literary novel. The book relies heavily on an unreliable narrator named Tracker, who has a magical knack for finding things. When Tracker is enlisted to help search for a kidnapped child — a child important to the novel’s warring kingdoms — he sets out with a mismatched group of people into a land filled with monsters from African myth. However, the people Tracker has fallen in with are far from trustworthy themselves, and the tale often spirals into dark and twisted territory.

But that is not the story, as Tracker would say.

A defining aspect of this novel is its twisty, non-linear timeline as Tracker recounts different parts of his story. It’s also unapologetically brutal and graphic. Be warned going in that this is not a book for the faint of heart or stomach, but it’s also been lauded as a modern literary masterpiece.