J.R.R. Tolkien famously described the Second Age of Middle-earth as a ?dark age, and not very much of its history is (or need be) told?. And for many years readers would need to be content with the tantalising glimpses of it found within the pages of The Lord of the Rings and its appendices, including the forging of the Rings of Power, the building of the Baradd�r and the rise of Sauron. It was not until Christopher Tolkien published The Silmarillion...

'Black Leopard, Red Wolf is the kind of novel I never realized I was missing until I read it. A dangerous, hallucinatory, ancient Africa, which becomes a fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made, with language as powerful as Angela Carter's. I cannot wait for the next installment' Neil Gaiman In this stunning follow-up to his Man Booker-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James draws on a rich tradition of African mythology,...