-How are you?
-You know what? I'm doing very well.
The last time I came here, I won the Booker Prize.
-Yes. -I bought some Mega Millions.
-You did. -Yeah, so...
-Oh, for this time, you think it's going to be the same thing.
This is good luck to see me? -I need a New York house.
-You need a New York -- Yeah. Well, you might need to buy
a couple Mega Millions, then. [ Laughter ]
Usually one lottery winning will not buy you a house in New York.
But you were here in 2015. -Mm-hmm.
-We talked about your book. You won the Man Booker Prize.
Did that -- You posted about it.
I did not know what it looked like
until I saw it on your Instagram.
There you see, there, and you wrote, "Holy [Bleep],"
which I think is about right. [ Laughter ]
And does that -- You know -- [ Applause ]
That's a big deal in the literary world.
Did it change your life right away?
-Well, it did because then any rude Facebook posts I made
became headlines. -Oh, I gotcha.
-I -- You know, I went to India, and the whole time,
I was tweeting on Facebook about how bad the airport was.
And by the time I landed, it was,
"Man Booker Prize winner insults India."
-Oh, wow! -Yeah.
That's not great.
-It was going on for the whole week.
The best one was at the end,
when somebody asked me how am I feeling about Jaipur.
I said, "I'm so overwhelmed by India."
And the thing is, "Marlon James is overwhelmed by India."
-[ Laughs ] -And it was, "It seems
he's changed his mind about India and the Indians."
I'm like, "I'm just talking about your airport."
[ Laughter ] -Yeah.
I mean -- New York. if we took it personally,
everybody who talked about LaGuardia,
none of us are gonna live here another day.
-Yeah. I mean, they sued the festival.
-Really? -Yeah, I was gonna go
to another festival, and they were like,
"You might want to sit that one out for a year."
-Wow. All right. Well, hopefully,
you'll be welcome back in India for your next book.
This is the first of trilogy. -Yeah.
-This is already a hefty book. Do you go into
knowing that you were gonna write --
because this is wonderful, but it's long.
Do you know when you embark?
Did you say, "This is gonna be a three-book story"?
-I knew it was a three-book story
when I was talking to somebody about this TV show "The Affair."
-Okay, that's a Showtime show, "The Affair"?
-Yeah, which I actually haven't seen yet.
-You haven't seen it yet? Okay.
-But it was hugely influential. She was -- It was the director,
and she was talking to me about it
and saying, "This is a great idea for a TV show."
And I was like, "Forget the TV show.
It's a great idea for a trilogy."
Because in a lot of African storytelling,
unlike storytelling in the West,
it's the trickster who's telling a story.
So you already know you can't quite believe it.
So, if I put out three books, which is
three different characters telling the same story --
by the way, I'm not going to tell the reader
which one to believe. They're gonna have to choose
after a few years. -That's fantastic.
-Yeah, it's gonna explode all over Reddit.
[ Laughter ]
-This is -- Some people have called this --
because as you mentioned, this deals with African folklore --
and some people have referred to it
as sort of an African "Game of Thrones"
but that actually came from something you said.
-You know, I said it as a kind of a joke.
I was talking to one of your writers backstage.
It seems I said it here. -Oh, really?
-Yeah. So I sent it in, this magazine
which I honestly didn't think anybody read.
-Okay. [ Light laughter ]
-It turns out, all the people who read it are in media.
-Okay. -And it got so bad
that George R.R. Martin sent me an e-mail.
-Really? -Oh, yeah.
-Like, a nice e-mail? -It was a really nice e-mail.
Sent me saying, "I heard you're writing
an African version of my book that sounds delightful."
[ Laughter ]
And then he invited me out to --
He invited me out to his bookstore.
-Oh, that's great.
-Yeah, so I did what every writer do.
I say, "Can I get a blurb?" -Oh, really?
-Yeah. -Did you get him to blurb?
No. He wouldn't blurb you. -Maybe he just was busy.
-He was probably busy. I mean, "Winds of Winter."
-I got to be honest -- with all the writing he needs to do,
I don't want him to waste any time.
If I heard he was like, "Oh, I was trying to,
but I had to read Marlon's book to blurb him."
-His big 620-page opus, no.
-I will say, one of the things that I'm gonna take away is,
you keep saying things either in interviews
or on Facebook and forgetting
that people are actually listening to you,
and you have to be a little bit more careful.
-I keep forgetting that, yeah.
-You had to do, obviously -- I'm guessing, at least --
a ton of research, in reading this.
-Yeah. -How do you even go about --
How many years does it take to research a book
that is going to be this specific?
-Well, I mean, it took two years of research --
meaning, it took two years of my assistant, Jeff,
to do all the research. -Okay, gotcha.
So, this is a Jeff job? -Yeah.
-What do you do while Jeff's doing the research?
-I -- You know what? I sit on and I think.
-Okay. -I think very hard.
-[ Laughs ] [ Applause ]
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-Enjoy it, right.
-But honestly, I also did -- I did quite a bit of it,
because, I mean, I was researching for two years --
meaning Jeff was researching for two years
before I even wrote ---
because I didn't know whose story it was.
-Mm-hmm. -And usually --
This is what happens when -- with stories for me.
I am usually talking to somebody --
usually a female friend --
and I get all my ideas from women.
-Not a bad way to go. -No, and they'll say something.
I'll go, "That's it." And when --
You know, when our friend said, you know, the whole idea
about "The Affair", I go, "That was it."
But until then, I didn't know,
and I sat around in my office for a good year,
and the idea came the week before school started.
So, I was like, "Great. I can write the book.
No, I got to teach." -Yeah. [ Laughs ]
And now, have you already moved on to the second?
Have you -- Is that part --
-Yeah, I've begun with the second.
Of course, the -- the person who tells book two
is kind of the villain of book one.
-Okay. -So, people already having
these emotional attachments to characters,
I'm like, "You might regret that."
-All right. [ Light laughter ]
I love the switching of perspectives.
I know you go to book signings
where people come to have you sign their books,
but I heard you were late to one of them
because you actually got caught up
trying to get one of your books signed.
-Yeah. So, I'm a huge fan of comics.
I'm a huge fan of Hellboy. -Same here. Great.
A fantastic book. -It was a L.A. book fair,
and I had my own line -- I had my own book-signing,
but Mike Mignola is, like, right there.
And I'm in this line that's like half a mile long.
[ Laughter ] And I'm not leaving,
because I have four stacks of "Hellboy."
He won't remember any of this. I'm not leaving,
because I came all the way from Jamaica with the whole --
-They should have run your line up,
like, sort of, perpendicular to his line.
-Precisely. -Yeah.
They they should have thought this through.
-Yeah. -You -- Now that people
have read the book, you can get feedback.
Do you like those moments where people can come up to you
and tell you things about your book,
or are there things you dread? -Not really, no.
-No, you don't like to go -- -No.
It's -- You know you'll be --
I'd be at a reading and it would be great,
and then you always have
the, "I don't have a question, just a comment."
[ Laughter ]
And I would be like, "You know what?
you can comment forever backstage."
-Wow. There you go. -I'm pretty good at it now.
-You're pretty good? You can shut it down?
-I can shut it down. -That's good.
Well, I'm very -- I'm just thrilled
that you have another one coming.
And I really enjoyed this, and in general,
it's just wonderful having you back on the show.
Thanks so much for being here. -It's great to be back.