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The Penguin employee book club read The Book of Night Women by Marlon James and submitted these questions to the author. The resulting Q&A is here:

1. You bring these characters and this time period to such vivid life. What kind of research did this novel involve? What resources did you have available?

I was already familiar with quite a bit about slavery, having studied it from high school days. It's the defining event in Caribbean history so you can't escape it even if you want to. Whether you're in history, cultural studies, music or economics, Slavery is the diaspora's Genesis chapter. So much of the history of slavery I already knew, but I still did a ton of research. History can be good at the what, when, where and even how, but not so much with the why. So I read slave narratives, master narratives, ship logs, tax records, pretty much everything. Histories of Fashion, costume archives, even weather patterns in the eighteenth century. The trick with research though is to not get so consumed with it that it becomes another form of procrastination. I had the first draft done before I did most of the research. As for resources, Jamaica does have an abundance of it, especially about slavery, but thank God for the internet or this novel would have taken twice as long.

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I'm thinking about getting into some trouble tonight. The fate of all authors might hang in the balance. I'm reading "Revenge of the Nerds" a funny and bittersweet article in the March/April Issue of Poets and Writers; about how today's (meaning my) generation of writers can be such wusses sometimes. How we lack the sturm und drang of the mighty men and women of the past; writers that doth bestride the world like colossuses or Colossi, if we want to get technical. Or at least get trashed and laid an awful lot. Writers seemed even more fascinating since they were rarely as Dorian grey hot as rock stars but were even more drunken and disorderly.

But Amy Shearn, who wrote the article, has a point. I think. Most of the writers interviewed said that they were simply too busy writing to get on with any debauchery. Others said that unlike their forebears, they couldn't depend on writing alone for a living so had to teach in places where scandals weren't looked upon with "you remember when" nostalgia (No this doesn't mean you, Bennington). Are we just wimpier? When Norman Mailer traded barbs with Gore Vidal, you knew that sooner or later somebody was going to punch somebody. Compare that to our own recent feuds, like Dale Peck Vs Rick Moody, which came across like two nerds trying to pull out their battered copy of Hitchhiker's Guide to slap each other with it.

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Obama: The Historic Journey Goes On Sale with a Flurry of National Media

The national media campaign for Obama: The Historic Journey by The New York Times, has gotten off to a great start. The adult and young readers’ editions, which Riverhead Books and Viking Children's Books released in collaboration with Callaway Arts & Entertainment, went on-sale on Presidents’ Day, Monday, February 16th and have spent the past week in the national spotlight. On the morning of on-sale Bill Keller, Executive Editor of The New York Times, was interviewed live on NBC’s “Today Show” the nation’s top-rated network morning show. On Tuesday, February 17th, Jill Abramson, Managing Editor of The New York Times, appeared live on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” with Joe Scarborough. Ms. Abramson followed these interviews by participating in a national television satellite tour on Wednesday, February 18th and a national radio satellite tour on Thursday, February 19th; as well as a live interview on WOR-AM’s “Joan Hamburg Show” on Thursday the 19th.

Last night, Barnes & Noble’s Lincoln Triangle store hosted a panel discussion with Jill Abramson and her New York Times colleagues, Michael Powell, Metro Reporter, Damon F. Winter, Photographer, and Jodi Kantor, Politics Domestic Correspondent. The event was a huge success.

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Marlon James is our guest blogger during the week of February 23th. If you have any questions for Marlon James, add a comment to any of his posts.

Here is some more information about The Book of Night Women:

(Read an excerpt from The Book of Night Women and watch the trailer for the book)

The Book of Night Women is a sweeping, startling novel, a true tour de force of both voice and storytelling. It is the story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century. Even at her birth, the slave women around her recognize a dark power that they-and she-will come to both revere and fear.

The Night Women, as they call themselves, have long been plotting a slave revolt, and as Lilith comes of age and reveals the extent of her power, they see her as the key to their plans. But when she begins to understand her own feelings and desires and identity, Lilith starts to push at the edges of what is imaginable for the life of a slave woman in Jamaica, and risks becoming the conspiracy's weak link.