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Top Literary Award Winner Working on ‘African Game of Thrones,’ Says ‘African Folklore is Just as Rich as That  S***’

Jamaican writer Marlon James has spent lots of time researching his next book inspired by “Game of Thrones,” but he is putting a unique spin on things with the emphasis on ancient African empires. Though the book is fictional, James has been reading up on numerous kingdoms in the motherland.

Quartz reports the 45-year-old has spent the last year and a half researching for his book, “Black Leopard, Red Wolf.” His studies have particularly focused on “lots of Benin, lots of Mali, lots of Songhai, lots of Ghana, lots of the Mossi kingdoms, the Falashas, the Solomonic dynasties in Ethiopia” on which the novel will be based.

However, that does not mean the book will be considered a historical fiction work.

“To write a novel like this calls for a lot of reconstruction,” James tells the website. “I’m not writing actual cities, because it’s still fantasy, it’s not history… but it’s also clearly influenced by these amazing glorious ages of African kingdoms.”

While James has been inspired by “GoT”  for his book, he is looking to separate it from the HBO series – which he readily admits he is not a major fan of.

Even though he is “definitely playing on mythology and history and its swords and sorcery and all of that” similar to “Thrones”, the Minneapolis resident said he wants to “pull from a different universe of myths.”

“I want to pull from a different body of history. A different kind of language. Even a different way of how we tell stories. That’s what’s been fascinating me and that’s what I’m setting out to do,” he said.

The novelist – who became the first Jamaican in history to win the Man Booker Prize for his most recent novel, “A Brief History of Seven Killings” last year – told Vulture he was moved to write “an African ‘Game of Thrones’ ” after realizing “how sick and tired I was of arguing about whether there should be a black hobbit in ‘Lord of the Rings.’ ”

His comments drummed up lots of excitement for “Black Leopard,” especially since “GoT” has been criticized for not including Black characters.

“African folklore is just as rich and just as perverse as that s—,” he continues. “We have witches, we have demons, we have goblins and mad kings. We have stories of royal succession that would put ‘Wolf Hall’ to shame. We beat the Tudors two times over.”

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