Longlisted for The Booker Prize 2026
‘Darkness is a mood in Jamaica . . .'
The Disappearers is Marlon James’s triumphant return to the Jamaica of A Brief History of Seven Killings – a place of heat and chaos, and of danger for anyone outside the heteronormal.
So when eight gay men meet for the first time, in Kingston in 1988, answering the casting call for an openly queer play, they are already taking a big risk. But that is nothing compared to what rains down on them when a mob descends on one of their rehearsals.
By the end of this night, one man is dead, all are injured, and two subsequently disappear.
As the survivors heal, each man finds he must confront the bigotry and homophobia that the attack laid bare. Some try to forget; some embrace their rage; and some simply vanish – but all are forever scarred.
As one of the victims puts it, ‘there’s a difference between when something ends and when something stops’. And this story won’t stop until both the disappearers and the perpetrators have been tracked, along trails both hot and cold, and an ending reached.
Epic and intimate, violent and forgiving, The Disappearers is a tour de force which only Marlon James could have written – both an unflinching portrait of the hatred and shame faced by gay men in a society which refuses to accept them, and a deeply human story of acceptance and insight.