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The Disappearers: A Novel
From Marlon James, author of the Booker Prize–winning A Brief History of Seven Killings: a propulsive novel about the murder of a gay man in 1980s Jamaica and its tragic consequences.
In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica begin rehearsals for a play. Though strangers to one another, they share an inescapable truth: All of them are gay. And they live in a world that refuses to accept them.
One night the men are savagely beaten and one of them is killed. As their bodies heal, the survivors begin to face the hatred and contempt that the violence laid bare. Some try to ignore what happened. Others double down on retribution. Some disappear completely.
In The Disappearers, Marlon James has written a riveting and deeply human story of men forced to make compromises to survive what the society they live in demands. It is both a dramatic page-turner and an unflinching exploration of queer life in Jamaica during the 1980s and 1990s.
In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica begin rehearsals for a play. Though strangers to one another, they share an inescapable truth: All of them are gay. And they live in a world that refuses to accept them.
One night the men are savagely beaten and one of them is killed. As their bodies heal, the survivors begin to face the hatred and contempt that the violence laid bare. Some try to ignore what happened. Others double down on retribution. Some disappear completely.
In The Disappearers, Marlon James has written a riveting and deeply human story of men forced to make compromises to survive what the society they live in demands. It is both a dramatic page-turner and an unflinching exploration of queer life in Jamaica during the 1980s and 1990s.
633 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 3, 2026
About the author
Marlon James
33 books5,244 followersMarlon James is a Jamaican-born writer. He has published three novels: John Crow's Devil (2005), The Book of Night Women (2009) and A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014), winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize. Now living in Minneapolis, James teaches literature at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.
James was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to parents who were both in the Jamaican police: his mother (who gave him his first prose book, a collection of stories by O. Henry) became a detective and his father (from whom James took a love of Shakespeare and Coleridge) a lawyer. James is a 1991 graduate of the University of the West Indies, where he read Language and Literature. He received a master's degree in creative writing from Wilkes University (2006).
James has taught English and creative writing at Macalester College since 2007. His first novel, John Crow's Devil — which was rejected 70 times before being accepted for publication — tells the story of a biblical struggle in a remote Jamaican village in 1957. His second novel, The Book of Night Women, is about a slave woman's revolt in a Jamaican plantation in the early 19th century. His most recent novel, 2014's A Brief History of Seven Killings, explores several decades of Jamaican history and political instability through the perspectives of many narrators. It won the fiction category of the 2015 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, having been the first book by a Jamaican author ever to be shortlisted. He is the second Caribbean winner of the prize, following Trinidad-born V. S. Naipaul who won in 1971.
(from Wikipedia)
James was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to parents who were both in the Jamaican police: his mother (who gave him his first prose book, a collection of stories by O. Henry) became a detective and his father (from whom James took a love of Shakespeare and Coleridge) a lawyer. James is a 1991 graduate of the University of the West Indies, where he read Language and Literature. He received a master's degree in creative writing from Wilkes University (2006).
James has taught English and creative writing at Macalester College since 2007. His first novel, John Crow's Devil — which was rejected 70 times before being accepted for publication — tells the story of a biblical struggle in a remote Jamaican village in 1957. His second novel, The Book of Night Women, is about a slave woman's revolt in a Jamaican plantation in the early 19th century. His most recent novel, 2014's A Brief History of Seven Killings, explores several decades of Jamaican history and political instability through the perspectives of many narrators. It won the fiction category of the 2015 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, having been the first book by a Jamaican author ever to be shortlisted. He is the second Caribbean winner of the prize, following Trinidad-born V. S. Naipaul who won in 1971.
(from Wikipedia)
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August 18, 2026This is one of those books that's so good I forgot at times I was reading a book. It's truly stunning how Marlon James thinks and writes and depicts these characters: their struggles, their glories, their conversations, their pain, their thoughts, their motivations. This is also one of the most difficult and upsetting books I've ever read. But the trauma, pain, and vi0lence is not without purpose. It's graphic in all manner of ways and contains this bodily-ness that very few writers today will even approach. James has crafted a narrative filled with characters that come to life, hold up a mirror to society, and then smash it. It's visceral, deeply moving, and singular.
September 1, 2026
You’ll have to read Marlon James’s new novel, The Disappearers, wearing asbestos gloves. The pages of this incomparable epic are fueled by desire and torched by rage.
The author, who won a Booker Prize for A Brief History of Seven Killings and then began a trilogy of mind-blowing African fantasies, has returned to Jamaica, his homeland, for what he’s calling his most personal novel.
The Disappearers is a story about living and dying, particularly dying, in the toxic homophobia of the late 20th century, when James was growing up in Kingston begging God to cleanse him. He doesn’t appear in the novel — “I am still lucky,” he quips, “never to have been one of the characters in a Marlon James novel” — but its spirit is informed by his own closeted life before he left the Caribbean. “Whether it was in a plane or a coffin,” he wrote in 2015, “I knew I had to get out of Jamaica.”
Out — and out of Jamaica — for years now, James has produced a book no less ambitious than Beloved, a novel to reckon with the ectoplasm of suffering and restore the presence of vanished people. Just as Toni Morrison’s classic shifted our understanding of the experience and legacy of slavery, so The Disappearers aspires to explode complacency and sear in the minds of readers the horrors of living in a world hostile to homosexuality.
This is an omnivorous novel, a book straining against its covers to contain the whole racial, economic, and political construction of sexual prohibitions imported from Britain and fermented in the Jamaican heat. But the length of The Disappearers — some 616 pages — is only its most obvious challenge. Far greater are....
Read the rest of this review for free on Substack:
https://roncharles.substack.com/p/mar...
The author, who won a Booker Prize for A Brief History of Seven Killings and then began a trilogy of mind-blowing African fantasies, has returned to Jamaica, his homeland, for what he’s calling his most personal novel.
The Disappearers is a story about living and dying, particularly dying, in the toxic homophobia of the late 20th century, when James was growing up in Kingston begging God to cleanse him. He doesn’t appear in the novel — “I am still lucky,” he quips, “never to have been one of the characters in a Marlon James novel” — but its spirit is informed by his own closeted life before he left the Caribbean. “Whether it was in a plane or a coffin,” he wrote in 2015, “I knew I had to get out of Jamaica.”
Out — and out of Jamaica — for years now, James has produced a book no less ambitious than Beloved, a novel to reckon with the ectoplasm of suffering and restore the presence of vanished people. Just as Toni Morrison’s classic shifted our understanding of the experience and legacy of slavery, so The Disappearers aspires to explode complacency and sear in the minds of readers the horrors of living in a world hostile to homosexuality.
This is an omnivorous novel, a book straining against its covers to contain the whole racial, economic, and political construction of sexual prohibitions imported from Britain and fermented in the Jamaican heat. But the length of The Disappearers — some 616 pages — is only its most obvious challenge. Far greater are....
Read the rest of this review for free on Substack:
https://roncharles.substack.com/p/mar...
September 1, 2026
Longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize
This book is relentless, and not always in a good way. It shows its ambitions in the language, length, structure, topics, basically everything. It asks to be read as serious literature, and that made it feel like work despite telling a very personal and important story for a gay reader like myself.
I think the best part remains the beginning. We know from the blurb that something bad is going to happen, but I think it is able to show that a community forced to stay hidden still exists in homophobic places like Jamaica.
We can see how AIDS was used as a tool to dehumanize the people it was killing, the fears of the characters (the act of buying a Prince album is something that must remain hidden for one of them), their difficulties (another is homeless), their own self-hate (one doesn't want to play the woman in the play), but also their hope for first love, for a future when they wouldn't have to hide.
Making a play is a bid for visibility for them. While it is true that they never get to perform it, they saw each other in the rehearsals. It is enough. It could have been the start of a great friendship, and it is, but it is brutally derailed by an attack on them.
As a gay reader, this part was disturbing. It is the most graphic thing I've read. It is relentless. It goes on page after page. It's the total opposite of what happens in Brokeback Mountain (which in itself is hard to revisit because it's one of the saddest things ever), where you get the emotional impact with so little. This book wants to put you there and make you take it. It wants the violence to be unignorable, to break you, to make you numb to it, and that's exactly the point it is trying to make. The violence against these gay men (and gay men in general in countries similar to Jamaica) isn't just emotional. It doesn't stop when a gay man is broken. It stops only when the attacker decides.
What comes next is also true. We see from different perspectives what this hate crime did to the survivors. It broke them in one way or another. One is forced to continue his life as a blind man, another is trying to be the support for the others, one chooses to leave and bury it deep down, one chooses to stay and get his revenge, one disappears. If it sounds poetic, that's a false impression. The book continues to show the ugly side of being a survivor. It remains as violent and graphic as before, and it is 100% the truth, but that doesn't make the reading experience less difficult.
Which brings me to my difficulty in rating the novel. I understand everything it is doing. I want to applaud its ambitions. I don't want to be that guy who asks for difficult reads and when one comes, complains that it shouldn't have been as difficult, that at least one aspect should have been more chill. But I am. And this is my rating... for the moment.
Thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss+ for the advance copy.
This book is relentless, and not always in a good way. It shows its ambitions in the language, length, structure, topics, basically everything. It asks to be read as serious literature, and that made it feel like work despite telling a very personal and important story for a gay reader like myself.
I think the best part remains the beginning. We know from the blurb that something bad is going to happen, but I think it is able to show that a community forced to stay hidden still exists in homophobic places like Jamaica.
We can see how AIDS was used as a tool to dehumanize the people it was killing, the fears of the characters (the act of buying a Prince album is something that must remain hidden for one of them), their difficulties (another is homeless), their own self-hate (one doesn't want to play the woman in the play), but also their hope for first love, for a future when they wouldn't have to hide.
Making a play is a bid for visibility for them. While it is true that they never get to perform it, they saw each other in the rehearsals. It is enough. It could have been the start of a great friendship, and it is, but it is brutally derailed by an attack on them.
As a gay reader, this part was disturbing. It is the most graphic thing I've read. It is relentless. It goes on page after page. It's the total opposite of what happens in Brokeback Mountain (which in itself is hard to revisit because it's one of the saddest things ever), where you get the emotional impact with so little. This book wants to put you there and make you take it. It wants the violence to be unignorable, to break you, to make you numb to it, and that's exactly the point it is trying to make. The violence against these gay men (and gay men in general in countries similar to Jamaica) isn't just emotional. It doesn't stop when a gay man is broken. It stops only when the attacker decides.
What comes next is also true. We see from different perspectives what this hate crime did to the survivors. It broke them in one way or another. One is forced to continue his life as a blind man, another is trying to be the support for the others, one chooses to leave and bury it deep down, one chooses to stay and get his revenge, one disappears. If it sounds poetic, that's a false impression. The book continues to show the ugly side of being a survivor. It remains as violent and graphic as before, and it is 100% the truth, but that doesn't make the reading experience less difficult.
Which brings me to my difficulty in rating the novel. I understand everything it is doing. I want to applaud its ambitions. I don't want to be that guy who asks for difficult reads and when one comes, complains that it shouldn't have been as difficult, that at least one aspect should have been more chill. But I am. And this is my rating... for the moment.
Thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss+ for the advance copy.
September 1, 2026
This is a damn good book. So well written. So smart. Intense. Manipulative (complimentary). Violent, funny, sexy, fucked up beyond belief while always driving toward the story. The way pop culture influences the book is profound and so well done. Easily a book of 2026.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 BOOKER PRIZE Shortlist will be announced on September 22.
Rating: 5* of five
The Publisher Says: From Marlon James, author of the Booker Prize–winning A Brief History of Seven Killings: a propulsive novel about the murder of a gay man in 1980s Jamaica and its tragic consequences.
In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica begin rehearsals for a play. Though strangers to one another, they share an inescapable truth: All of them are gay. And they live in a world that refuses to accept them.
One night the men are savagely beaten and one of them is killed. As their bodies heal, the survivors begin to face the hatred and contempt that the violence laid bare. Some try to ignore what happened. Others double down on retribution. Some disappear completely.
In The Disappearers, Marlon James has written a riveting and deeply human story of men forced to make compromises to survive what the society they live in demands. It is both a dramatic page-turner and an unflinching exploration of queer life in Jamaica during the 1980s and 1990s.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Y'all do not know what it means to be at risk of your life for what you do in your bedroom. It's okay with church ladies, sports stars, politicians, dumb fucks on street corners, to insult, threaten, jeer at, and...if there are enough of them...chase and beat you, often enough to death, because of what you do in your bedroom.
It's the reality of being yourself as a queer person. It's not different in the US, only for the most part quieter.
So these 640 pages will come as a illusion-threatening denial-generating surprise to the majority of you. It will cause knee-jerk "no, it's not *that* bad." Yes. It is.
Yes. It is.
This story is based on real events. It should shame every one of you who's made a homophpbic joke, laughed at stories with lisping queens, or any of the other minstrel-sho-with-fags stuff you've seen and heard, because it Others and thus aids in desensitizing murderous idiots. Maybe you didn't mean it to, but it did and it does. I don't think any of you will read this book, so let me tell you what happens:
A bunch of gay guys get together to put on a play that no one is forcing anyone to watch. A gang of those guys who make the jokes you laugh at decide they don't like the fact they're doing this, so they go to the place the rehearsals...not even a public performance...take place, and beat the actors for daring to address the feelings and concerns of people like them before, I remind you, the play that no one is forced to watch unless they choose to so severely one loses his sight.
And one dies.
The remaining six are traumatized.
Because y'all hate people. Who do not ask you to participate in sex, celebrate Otherness, or even make yourselves aware of individual acts of entertainment's existence. "*I* didn't do that" no, but did you ever fail to stop a joke to deride a bigot to interrupt a hate-filled sermon?
No. You did not.
So these eight men lost lives they weren't through living, altered or ended, because no one ever stood up and said "what you do to these men you do also to me" and stood in solidarity at a grocery store, in a meeting, at a dinner party, and said "stop."
Sleep tight.
Rating: 5* of five
The Publisher Says: From Marlon James, author of the Booker Prize–winning A Brief History of Seven Killings: a propulsive novel about the murder of a gay man in 1980s Jamaica and its tragic consequences.
In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica begin rehearsals for a play. Though strangers to one another, they share an inescapable truth: All of them are gay. And they live in a world that refuses to accept them.
One night the men are savagely beaten and one of them is killed. As their bodies heal, the survivors begin to face the hatred and contempt that the violence laid bare. Some try to ignore what happened. Others double down on retribution. Some disappear completely.
In The Disappearers, Marlon James has written a riveting and deeply human story of men forced to make compromises to survive what the society they live in demands. It is both a dramatic page-turner and an unflinching exploration of queer life in Jamaica during the 1980s and 1990s.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Y'all do not know what it means to be at risk of your life for what you do in your bedroom. It's okay with church ladies, sports stars, politicians, dumb fucks on street corners, to insult, threaten, jeer at, and...if there are enough of them...chase and beat you, often enough to death, because of what you do in your bedroom.
It's the reality of being yourself as a queer person. It's not different in the US, only for the most part quieter.
So these 640 pages will come as a illusion-threatening denial-generating surprise to the majority of you. It will cause knee-jerk "no, it's not *that* bad." Yes. It is.
Yes. It is.
This story is based on real events. It should shame every one of you who's made a homophpbic joke, laughed at stories with lisping queens, or any of the other minstrel-sho-with-fags stuff you've seen and heard, because it Others and thus aids in desensitizing murderous idiots. Maybe you didn't mean it to, but it did and it does. I don't think any of you will read this book, so let me tell you what happens:
A bunch of gay guys get together to put on a play that no one is forcing anyone to watch. A gang of those guys who make the jokes you laugh at decide they don't like the fact they're doing this, so they go to the place the rehearsals...not even a public performance...take place, and beat the actors for daring to address the feelings and concerns of people like them before, I remind you, the play that no one is forced to watch unless they choose to so severely one loses his sight.
And one dies.
The remaining six are traumatized.
Because y'all hate people. Who do not ask you to participate in sex, celebrate Otherness, or even make yourselves aware of individual acts of entertainment's existence. "*I* didn't do that" no, but did you ever fail to stop a joke to deride a bigot to interrupt a hate-filled sermon?
No. You did not.
So these eight men lost lives they weren't through living, altered or ended, because no one ever stood up and said "what you do to these men you do also to me" and stood in solidarity at a grocery store, in a meeting, at a dinner party, and said "stop."
Sleep tight.
Review of advance copy
Longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize
"She will come back as fire! Burn all the liars, leave a blanket of ash on the ground”
Frances Farmer Shall Have Her Revenge on Seattle, by Nirvana
I’m back at the end of James Joyce’s “An Encounter” where the narrator discovers that he always despised his friend a little. We about to do this dance? I ask myself. Where gay people try to be gay in the presence of thine enemies. Except there is no Jamaican Polari, no secret Jamaican gay language. I’m sure there is some battyboy code, but I never hang around any society long enough to learn it, except for the sex stuff because that language is business jargon.
John Rechy’s The Sexual Outlaw, page twenty-eight: The promiscuous homosexual is a sexual revolutionary. There is no point to straight sex other than to breed, since the chances of the man and the woman experiencing the same degree of pleasure is next to nil. There is no point to gay sex other than pleasure, since no pussy has ever impregnated a pussy and no asshole can breed.
Marlon James' The Disappearers is a novel in five parts, a searing and explicit confrontation with the violent homophobia of Jamaica in the period in which it is set.
1. THE PLAY, May 1988
2. THE BLACKJACKS, June 1988
3. THE DISAPPEARERS, April–December 1994
4. THE EXILE AND RETURN, February–December 1999
5. THE NEW WORLD, August 2005
THE PLAY is in the form of a journal written by Eddy Porteous, in his late teens. He is one of 5 men who answer a call, coded to reach the gay community, to act in a play.
The director, financer, state manager and volunteer cast:
Havelock Titus, director, producer, former bon vivant
Omar Joseph, his own boss, millionaire, actor
Clive Lim, stage manager
Jordan Brown, expelled student, actor, boy of slender means
Matt Chin, business executive, actor
Rainford Ellis, office worker, actor
Edmond “Eddy” Porteous, student, actor, second son
Orrin Turner, data systems manager, actor
The play is Havelock's adaption of Fortune and Men's Eyes, by John Herbert (the original's title itself taken from a Shakespeare sonnet).
Eddy's journal leads us through the rehearsals for the play, his own troubled home life, and his kinship but also rivalry with fellow cast member Jordan, the two sharing a love of literature but in Eddy's case a need for apporoval and in Jordan's a competing need to be seen as the smartest in the room.
On one hand I really don’t want to be in a car with Jordan, but on the other hand I really want to be in his car. I want to see how a man who lives in his car lives. It must be freeing or something, a space that can set up knowing that no mother will ever walk in to talk about clothes on the floor and porn in the drawers she’s supposed to stop checking. But honestly there is a part of me that also wants to see what life will be like when my parents finally kick me out of the house and disown their son. I feel it coming. Don’t know if it coming soon, but I feel it coming. Telling myself all sort of shit don’t help, stuff like they’re an uptown family, they won’t throw me out on the street, they’ll ship me off to Miami or New York or somewhere in America, which would only make me happier. I think. They can’t have it come out that they have a son on the street, or that he is a battyboy.
The journal ends with Eddy missing a day of rehearsal, due to family issues, and thereby escaping a violent attack on the company from a homophobic mob, which leaves one man dead and another blinded.
THE BLACKJACKS tells the story of that event from the perspective of the attackers, who are led by rapper Streggeh Don, singer of the homophobe's anthem "Batty is not Pussy." The section is told in a series of vox pops.
Corporal T.
First thing we do, we take our unforms off. Put on clothes that make blackness blacker. Ten phone calls to ten men with ten clubs. Call them the blackjack.
Aaron L.
And we walk in on them all wearing stoosh clothes like they sailing in from one hundred years ago. At first it looks like it’s the costumes that turned around frightened. One looks like Sherlock Holmes. Another looks like he walked out of Oliver Twist—not the TV show on Sunday night but the movie where every minute somebody burst out a song. Good movie but as usual no black people star in it, so I know these battyboys are doing the white man thing. White is the root of all sexual sin, since according to Black Israel it’s sexual sin that birthed the white race in the first place.
And one faggot, the older one in the green jacket, says something that sounds like what a Jeeves the butler would say, but we don’t hear it. And another, the one who looks white but is really yellow, says another thing that also sounds stoosh, and a skinny one (three of them are skinny) drops his wrist and says no no no no no, and another skinny one who looks like Kunta Kinte runs so fast that he runs into another TV show, and yet another one whose skin is shoe polish and whose hair is like young Bob Marley, he look at us and scream. No, not a scream but something a dog says before he bites you. Then he grabs a broomstick.
THE DISAPPEARERS begins in April 1994, on the day of Kurt Cobain's death, and is narrated by Jordan. In the section's present he has a sexual relationship with one of the Blackjacks (who doesn't recognise Jordan), a man who took part in the attack 6 years earlier in an unsucessful attempt to expunge his own homosexual feelings.
Jordan quotes music lyrics to express feelings he cannot articulate is his own words, in particular grunge, referencing various songs from, inter alia, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Hole and the Pixies.
I didn’t want to go, but I couldn’t stay there. So I went down to Kingston Harbor and walked the docks all night. There were two things that were supposed to happen. Some boy so poor that he couldn’t afford a sense of right and wrong would see fresh meat with a wallet attached and beat me to a pulp until it dropped out. Or another kind would see fresh meat with a wallet attached and draw down ’pon me to see how much of that wallet he could lick, suck, or fuck out. Like the R&B song said, I was truly down for whatever. I think what happened was the third thing, would-be robbers, fuckers, and killers saw a mad man screaming “She will come back as fire! Burn all the liars, leave a blanket of ash on the ground” and stayed the fuck away.
I couldn’t believe he left us. I couldn’t believe he left me.
My parents kicked me out to live on the street in 1986 when I was seventeen years old, yet April 8, 1994, was the first time I ever felt alone. That’s not true. I’ve felt alone since I was eight years old and realized that Robert Jackson didn’t like me the way I liked him, but this was the first time it felt like this was something someone did to me.
Jordan also looks back on his and Eddy's attempt to find two of their fellow cast members who vanished after the attack, this part primarily told from interviews given by Jordan in 1993 to a journalist, who also spoke with Eddy in 1992.
THE EXILE AND RETURN is a series of letters written in 1999, from the play's director, Havelock, to an old friend Mark, from his time at Oxford and subsequent post-grad time in London. The 61yo Havelock, back in Jamaica after receiving a cocktail of drugs to combat the AIDS he has lived with for over a decade, looks back on his life including, reluctantly, the events of June 1988,
This goddamn business of getting old though. I, Havelock Titus, submit that those who lose their minds early are luckier because they are no longer aware of a mind to lose. They certainly don’t have to be aware of the constant indignities that come with losing one’s body. Add to that, my friend, what was fact only five years ago: that neither of us were never supposed to die of old age. I’m not even talking about AIDS. I mean that as queers, stately old homos, faggots, (or for some Jamaican flavor) battymen, our life expectancies should have run out at least ten years ago.
I for one thought I would go down blazing, and by “blazing,” darling, I do mean in the most literal sense: with a car tire lassoed around my neck and my bound arms and beaten body set afire by a righteous Jamaican mob. We always thought God had already chose the person who would come to kill us. If not with the mob, then the police. If not the cops, then some boy who will love us, murder us, then tell the police that we grabbed his balls, God is his witness.
The letters are erudite (the first opens with a reference to The Life of Hadrian), although wonderfully one is wriiten in Polari. And we also catch up with the present situation of Jordan and Eddy, each still impacted by events 11years earlier, but in very different ways.
THE NEW WORLD is in two parts, the first a monologuefrim a crazed Jordan, now 36, to Streggeh Doh:
June the 3rd, 1988. That’s when you and your closest friends, you and your anti-faggot gestapo, drop down on we like it was Kristallnacht. Don’t bother, you don’t fucking know what that is. You know which one of us was Omar? From the point you all invite yourselves in, there was no way you was going to leave that house with any trace of the gay. Yow, ever hear about this man named Eminem? White rapper. Famous. Biggest in the world. You would like him. But this bredda, his favorite thing to rap about is how he hate homosexuals. Hate them like how Jesus hate sin. Yet, and this is where you come in, Streggeh, there is more cocksucking and butt fucking goin’ on in his records than any gay porn. My point being that for a bunch of men who can’t stand it, you seem really obsessed with how we fuck. I mean, “Batty Is Not Pussy” is basically a manual on gay sex. You even include foreplay.
And the last part reintroduces us to one of those who went missing.
The novel contains copious explicit depictions of sex and violence, sometimes combined, although given the subject matter this feels integral rather than gratuitous, and it falls short, in both extremeness but also literary impact, of the (in)famous The Part about the Crimes of 2666.
An ambitious work and a powerful if far from pleasant read, and one the judges would have struggled to overlook.
A grunge playlist from the novel
Nirvana - Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle; Radio Friendly Unit Shifter; Territorial Pissings; Come As You Are; Rape Me; and Been a Son as representative of Incesticide, whose sleeve note is referenced
Soundgarden - Superunknown
Hole - Asking For It; Gutless
Young Marble Giants, also Hole - Credit in the Straight World
Pixies - Broken Face
Sonic Youth - Kool Thing and Tunic (Song for Karen) - both as representative songs from Goo, the album cover referenced (James has previously referenced Kool Thing)
The judges' commendation
‘The Disappearers is among Marlon James’s most ambitious and history-making works, a novel that examines territory Caribbean literature has rarely dared to occupy. Beginning in late 1980s Kingston, it follows eight male actors rehearsing what is billed as Jamaica’s first openly gay play. When the men become victims of brutal homophobic violence, the novel shifts register: in the years that follow, one survivor sets out to investigate the fates of the others, and what begins as a theatrical story becomes something closer to a reckoning.
James is a singular literary talent. His dialogue is sharp and propulsive, his phrasing is poetic, visceral and capable of moving from the painful to the darkly hilarious within a single exchange. The Disappearers could be read as a long overdue, clear-eyed confrontation with Jamaican homophobia: unflinching in its honesty, but written with the full complexity and love of someone who knows the place and its contradictions from the inside.’
"She will come back as fire! Burn all the liars, leave a blanket of ash on the ground”
Frances Farmer Shall Have Her Revenge on Seattle, by Nirvana
I’m back at the end of James Joyce’s “An Encounter” where the narrator discovers that he always despised his friend a little. We about to do this dance? I ask myself. Where gay people try to be gay in the presence of thine enemies. Except there is no Jamaican Polari, no secret Jamaican gay language. I’m sure there is some battyboy code, but I never hang around any society long enough to learn it, except for the sex stuff because that language is business jargon.
John Rechy’s The Sexual Outlaw, page twenty-eight: The promiscuous homosexual is a sexual revolutionary. There is no point to straight sex other than to breed, since the chances of the man and the woman experiencing the same degree of pleasure is next to nil. There is no point to gay sex other than pleasure, since no pussy has ever impregnated a pussy and no asshole can breed.
Marlon James' The Disappearers is a novel in five parts, a searing and explicit confrontation with the violent homophobia of Jamaica in the period in which it is set.
1. THE PLAY, May 1988
2. THE BLACKJACKS, June 1988
3. THE DISAPPEARERS, April–December 1994
4. THE EXILE AND RETURN, February–December 1999
5. THE NEW WORLD, August 2005
THE PLAY is in the form of a journal written by Eddy Porteous, in his late teens. He is one of 5 men who answer a call, coded to reach the gay community, to act in a play.
The director, financer, state manager and volunteer cast:
Havelock Titus, director, producer, former bon vivant
Omar Joseph, his own boss, millionaire, actor
Clive Lim, stage manager
Jordan Brown, expelled student, actor, boy of slender means
Matt Chin, business executive, actor
Rainford Ellis, office worker, actor
Edmond “Eddy” Porteous, student, actor, second son
Orrin Turner, data systems manager, actor
The play is Havelock's adaption of Fortune and Men's Eyes, by John Herbert (the original's title itself taken from a Shakespeare sonnet).
Eddy's journal leads us through the rehearsals for the play, his own troubled home life, and his kinship but also rivalry with fellow cast member Jordan, the two sharing a love of literature but in Eddy's case a need for apporoval and in Jordan's a competing need to be seen as the smartest in the room.
On one hand I really don’t want to be in a car with Jordan, but on the other hand I really want to be in his car. I want to see how a man who lives in his car lives. It must be freeing or something, a space that can set up knowing that no mother will ever walk in to talk about clothes on the floor and porn in the drawers she’s supposed to stop checking. But honestly there is a part of me that also wants to see what life will be like when my parents finally kick me out of the house and disown their son. I feel it coming. Don’t know if it coming soon, but I feel it coming. Telling myself all sort of shit don’t help, stuff like they’re an uptown family, they won’t throw me out on the street, they’ll ship me off to Miami or New York or somewhere in America, which would only make me happier. I think. They can’t have it come out that they have a son on the street, or that he is a battyboy.
The journal ends with Eddy missing a day of rehearsal, due to family issues, and thereby escaping a violent attack on the company from a homophobic mob, which leaves one man dead and another blinded.
THE BLACKJACKS tells the story of that event from the perspective of the attackers, who are led by rapper Streggeh Don, singer of the homophobe's anthem "Batty is not Pussy." The section is told in a series of vox pops.
Corporal T.
First thing we do, we take our unforms off. Put on clothes that make blackness blacker. Ten phone calls to ten men with ten clubs. Call them the blackjack.
Aaron L.
And we walk in on them all wearing stoosh clothes like they sailing in from one hundred years ago. At first it looks like it’s the costumes that turned around frightened. One looks like Sherlock Holmes. Another looks like he walked out of Oliver Twist—not the TV show on Sunday night but the movie where every minute somebody burst out a song. Good movie but as usual no black people star in it, so I know these battyboys are doing the white man thing. White is the root of all sexual sin, since according to Black Israel it’s sexual sin that birthed the white race in the first place.
And one faggot, the older one in the green jacket, says something that sounds like what a Jeeves the butler would say, but we don’t hear it. And another, the one who looks white but is really yellow, says another thing that also sounds stoosh, and a skinny one (three of them are skinny) drops his wrist and says no no no no no, and another skinny one who looks like Kunta Kinte runs so fast that he runs into another TV show, and yet another one whose skin is shoe polish and whose hair is like young Bob Marley, he look at us and scream. No, not a scream but something a dog says before he bites you. Then he grabs a broomstick.
THE DISAPPEARERS begins in April 1994, on the day of Kurt Cobain's death, and is narrated by Jordan. In the section's present he has a sexual relationship with one of the Blackjacks (who doesn't recognise Jordan), a man who took part in the attack 6 years earlier in an unsucessful attempt to expunge his own homosexual feelings.
Jordan quotes music lyrics to express feelings he cannot articulate is his own words, in particular grunge, referencing various songs from, inter alia, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Hole and the Pixies.
I didn’t want to go, but I couldn’t stay there. So I went down to Kingston Harbor and walked the docks all night. There were two things that were supposed to happen. Some boy so poor that he couldn’t afford a sense of right and wrong would see fresh meat with a wallet attached and beat me to a pulp until it dropped out. Or another kind would see fresh meat with a wallet attached and draw down ’pon me to see how much of that wallet he could lick, suck, or fuck out. Like the R&B song said, I was truly down for whatever. I think what happened was the third thing, would-be robbers, fuckers, and killers saw a mad man screaming “She will come back as fire! Burn all the liars, leave a blanket of ash on the ground” and stayed the fuck away.
I couldn’t believe he left us. I couldn’t believe he left me.
My parents kicked me out to live on the street in 1986 when I was seventeen years old, yet April 8, 1994, was the first time I ever felt alone. That’s not true. I’ve felt alone since I was eight years old and realized that Robert Jackson didn’t like me the way I liked him, but this was the first time it felt like this was something someone did to me.
Jordan also looks back on his and Eddy's attempt to find two of their fellow cast members who vanished after the attack, this part primarily told from interviews given by Jordan in 1993 to a journalist, who also spoke with Eddy in 1992.
THE EXILE AND RETURN is a series of letters written in 1999, from the play's director, Havelock, to an old friend Mark, from his time at Oxford and subsequent post-grad time in London. The 61yo Havelock, back in Jamaica after receiving a cocktail of drugs to combat the AIDS he has lived with for over a decade, looks back on his life including, reluctantly, the events of June 1988,
This goddamn business of getting old though. I, Havelock Titus, submit that those who lose their minds early are luckier because they are no longer aware of a mind to lose. They certainly don’t have to be aware of the constant indignities that come with losing one’s body. Add to that, my friend, what was fact only five years ago: that neither of us were never supposed to die of old age. I’m not even talking about AIDS. I mean that as queers, stately old homos, faggots, (or for some Jamaican flavor) battymen, our life expectancies should have run out at least ten years ago.
I for one thought I would go down blazing, and by “blazing,” darling, I do mean in the most literal sense: with a car tire lassoed around my neck and my bound arms and beaten body set afire by a righteous Jamaican mob. We always thought God had already chose the person who would come to kill us. If not with the mob, then the police. If not the cops, then some boy who will love us, murder us, then tell the police that we grabbed his balls, God is his witness.
The letters are erudite (the first opens with a reference to The Life of Hadrian), although wonderfully one is wriiten in Polari. And we also catch up with the present situation of Jordan and Eddy, each still impacted by events 11years earlier, but in very different ways.
THE NEW WORLD is in two parts, the first a monologuefrim a crazed Jordan, now 36, to Streggeh Doh:
June the 3rd, 1988. That’s when you and your closest friends, you and your anti-faggot gestapo, drop down on we like it was Kristallnacht. Don’t bother, you don’t fucking know what that is. You know which one of us was Omar? From the point you all invite yourselves in, there was no way you was going to leave that house with any trace of the gay. Yow, ever hear about this man named Eminem? White rapper. Famous. Biggest in the world. You would like him. But this bredda, his favorite thing to rap about is how he hate homosexuals. Hate them like how Jesus hate sin. Yet, and this is where you come in, Streggeh, there is more cocksucking and butt fucking goin’ on in his records than any gay porn. My point being that for a bunch of men who can’t stand it, you seem really obsessed with how we fuck. I mean, “Batty Is Not Pussy” is basically a manual on gay sex. You even include foreplay.
And the last part reintroduces us to one of those who went missing.
The novel contains copious explicit depictions of sex and violence, sometimes combined, although given the subject matter this feels integral rather than gratuitous, and it falls short, in both extremeness but also literary impact, of the (in)famous The Part about the Crimes of 2666.
An ambitious work and a powerful if far from pleasant read, and one the judges would have struggled to overlook.
A grunge playlist from the novel
Nirvana - Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle; Radio Friendly Unit Shifter; Territorial Pissings; Come As You Are; Rape Me; and Been a Son as representative of Incesticide, whose sleeve note is referenced
Soundgarden - Superunknown
Hole - Asking For It; Gutless
Young Marble Giants, also Hole - Credit in the Straight World
Pixies - Broken Face
Sonic Youth - Kool Thing and Tunic (Song for Karen) - both as representative songs from Goo, the album cover referenced (James has previously referenced Kool Thing)
The judges' commendation
‘The Disappearers is among Marlon James’s most ambitious and history-making works, a novel that examines territory Caribbean literature has rarely dared to occupy. Beginning in late 1980s Kingston, it follows eight male actors rehearsing what is billed as Jamaica’s first openly gay play. When the men become victims of brutal homophobic violence, the novel shifts register: in the years that follow, one survivor sets out to investigate the fates of the others, and what begins as a theatrical story becomes something closer to a reckoning.
James is a singular literary talent. His dialogue is sharp and propulsive, his phrasing is poetic, visceral and capable of moving from the painful to the darkly hilarious within a single exchange. The Disappearers could be read as a long overdue, clear-eyed confrontation with Jamaican homophobia: unflinching in its honesty, but written with the full complexity and love of someone who knows the place and its contradictions from the inside.’
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Booker Longlist 2026
“Learn to run fast on short notice. I wanted Eddy to see this, after all he just experienced as an exception what some of we experience as a rule. Really"
"At some point I stopped being clever and ended up being unconscious because at about five in the morning I woke up in a hospital ward.."
Once in a while, you read a novel that is so powerful and even graphic that you have to pause now and again to get your thoughts together, take a breath and continue knowing that things will still be a challenging read - but more to the point that what you are reading is important and essential to enter and understand a world of violence and cruelty that is inflicted upon a community.
The Disappearers begins in 1988 in Kingston Jamaica when a group of gay men meet to be cast in an openly gay play; this is dangerous in a society where to be gay - or not heteronormative - is illegal and the law is taken into the hands of anyone who feels the need to use violence as a form of justice. This is the era where the word AIDS was used to legitimise violence as a weapon. It is not long before the men are cruelly and viscously attacked by a group of men ( including police) one is murdered and the others sustain violent injuries. This is not easy reading at all but is so vital.
Each of themes tries other continue their lives in their own way- some want to forget; some want to runaway ; some want retribution. Their struggles are palpable and heartbreaking but even within this group of men there is need to try and understand and accept the choices made by one another.
The world of the men is explored and the hidden world of Jamaican gay community- the prose is explicit, and direct but none of it is written for the sake of deliberate provocation - every element builds a picture of the lives- the tragedies, the battles and sometimes the joys.
Marlon James has written a masterpiece ( yes, Book Longlisted 2026- if it wins it will be a miracle but certainly deserves plaudits and attention)
There is dark humour within the story and the referencing of music during the 80s and 90s adds a strong period dynamic as well as another level of connection with some of the characters as the lyrics enter their thoughts and words as a comfort and power.
Marlon James' words are unwavering /fearless in their desire to make every reader truly understand the vileness of a society that cannot accept difference ( and hides away the hypocrisy of some "straight men")
This will unsettle some readers but in a world where the rise of the rightwing and laws are being being repealed against diversity, then The Disappearers is a powerful reminder how far some parts of the world may have moved forward ( but could easily regress) but also to make us realise that in some places gay sex is still illegal - Jamaica to this very day - and violence is still part of some people's agenda.
This is a story that cries out to let us all be who we want to be and illuminates a world where acceptance is never fully given
Superb.
Thank you Marlon James
Thank you to Hamish Hamilton/Penguin Random House and NetGalley for an advance for an honest and unbiased review
“Learn to run fast on short notice. I wanted Eddy to see this, after all he just experienced as an exception what some of we experience as a rule. Really"
"At some point I stopped being clever and ended up being unconscious because at about five in the morning I woke up in a hospital ward.."
Once in a while, you read a novel that is so powerful and even graphic that you have to pause now and again to get your thoughts together, take a breath and continue knowing that things will still be a challenging read - but more to the point that what you are reading is important and essential to enter and understand a world of violence and cruelty that is inflicted upon a community.
The Disappearers begins in 1988 in Kingston Jamaica when a group of gay men meet to be cast in an openly gay play; this is dangerous in a society where to be gay - or not heteronormative - is illegal and the law is taken into the hands of anyone who feels the need to use violence as a form of justice. This is the era where the word AIDS was used to legitimise violence as a weapon. It is not long before the men are cruelly and viscously attacked by a group of men ( including police) one is murdered and the others sustain violent injuries. This is not easy reading at all but is so vital.
Each of themes tries other continue their lives in their own way- some want to forget; some want to runaway ; some want retribution. Their struggles are palpable and heartbreaking but even within this group of men there is need to try and understand and accept the choices made by one another.
The world of the men is explored and the hidden world of Jamaican gay community- the prose is explicit, and direct but none of it is written for the sake of deliberate provocation - every element builds a picture of the lives- the tragedies, the battles and sometimes the joys.
Marlon James has written a masterpiece ( yes, Book Longlisted 2026- if it wins it will be a miracle but certainly deserves plaudits and attention)
There is dark humour within the story and the referencing of music during the 80s and 90s adds a strong period dynamic as well as another level of connection with some of the characters as the lyrics enter their thoughts and words as a comfort and power.
Marlon James' words are unwavering /fearless in their desire to make every reader truly understand the vileness of a society that cannot accept difference ( and hides away the hypocrisy of some "straight men")
This will unsettle some readers but in a world where the rise of the rightwing and laws are being being repealed against diversity, then The Disappearers is a powerful reminder how far some parts of the world may have moved forward ( but could easily regress) but also to make us realise that in some places gay sex is still illegal - Jamaica to this very day - and violence is still part of some people's agenda.
This is a story that cries out to let us all be who we want to be and illuminates a world where acceptance is never fully given
Superb.
Thank you Marlon James
Thank you to Hamish Hamilton/Penguin Random House and NetGalley for an advance for an honest and unbiased review
September 5, 2026
Booker Longlist #13
3.5, rounded up.
Ostensibly, this should have been right in my wheelhouse, since it begins with the story of a gay theatre troupe - and I taught a gay theatre course at USF. But I had much the same issues with this as I did with James' first Booker winner, A Brief History of Seven Killings: difficulties in following exactly what is happening; keeping the multitude of characters (pardon the expression!) straight; the relentless violence and sexual explicitness; constantly running to the PC to look up the Jamaican patois.
It is also one of those books that, IMHO, would be twice as effective at half the length - not everything included is strictly necessary, and I felt we lost the thread of the story several times while meandering on and on with superfluities and repetitions (looking at you, Pt. 4!).
That said, there are many powerful set pieces, and even if I felt bludgeoned and violated myself at a few points, both the violence and the explicit sex are integral to the work as a whole. The end sequence, though effective, did leave me a trifle flummoxed, in that after all that had gone before, I found it difficult to reconcile that
As I rate and rank books on the basis of personal enjoyment as well as inherent worthiness, this is only going in 4th place in my personal Booker list, since I can't say there was much joy to be found here - although I fully understand those who rank it #1 (... something I can't fathom for those who place, say Helen of Nowhere first). Extolling it as the book of the decade, let alone century, I do find more than a bit hyperbolic, however.
PS- am curious if James had to get permission from John Herbert's estate for use of his play Fortune and Men's Eyes, even though he altered the text, since it's still under copyright. I didn't see any permission mentioned, but I read an ARC.
3.5, rounded up.
Ostensibly, this should have been right in my wheelhouse, since it begins with the story of a gay theatre troupe - and I taught a gay theatre course at USF. But I had much the same issues with this as I did with James' first Booker winner, A Brief History of Seven Killings: difficulties in following exactly what is happening; keeping the multitude of characters (pardon the expression!) straight; the relentless violence and sexual explicitness; constantly running to the PC to look up the Jamaican patois.
It is also one of those books that, IMHO, would be twice as effective at half the length - not everything included is strictly necessary, and I felt we lost the thread of the story several times while meandering on and on with superfluities and repetitions (looking at you, Pt. 4!).
That said, there are many powerful set pieces, and even if I felt bludgeoned and violated myself at a few points, both the violence and the explicit sex are integral to the work as a whole. The end sequence, though effective, did leave me a trifle flummoxed, in that after all that had gone before, I found it difficult to reconcile that
As I rate and rank books on the basis of personal enjoyment as well as inherent worthiness, this is only going in 4th place in my personal Booker list, since I can't say there was much joy to be found here - although I fully understand those who rank it #1 (... something I can't fathom for those who place, say Helen of Nowhere first). Extolling it as the book of the decade, let alone century, I do find more than a bit hyperbolic, however.
PS- am curious if James had to get permission from John Herbert's estate for use of his play Fortune and Men's Eyes, even though he altered the text, since it's still under copyright. I didn't see any permission mentioned, but I read an ARC.
August 24, 2026
perhaps the most challenging book i’ve ever read. i’m very glad i did—it’s a total feat, and will undoubtably accumulate well-deserved praise.
that being said, i don’t know if i’d be able to read it again, any time soon. it’s enormously difficult to sit with and, at over 600 pages, you sit with the violence and brutality for quite a while.
it’s ultimately an urgent and necessary read. heavy, yes, but intentional down to the last punctuation mark.
that being said, i don’t know if i’d be able to read it again, any time soon. it’s enormously difficult to sit with and, at over 600 pages, you sit with the violence and brutality for quite a while.
it’s ultimately an urgent and necessary read. heavy, yes, but intentional down to the last punctuation mark.
July 11, 2026
A tour de force. I think this is bigger than I have the words for right now. Brutal. Heartbreaking. Completely had me in its grip. As with all of the best door stoppers, I finished it feeling like I needed to come up for air.
Read
August 25, 2026For a novel so brutal, so violent, so full of hate, James uses form in such a playful and elegant way. He captures Kingston in 1988 with homosexuality illegal and the AIDS epidemic haunting and hunting his cast of queer thespians. At so many moments I wanted to look away but James ensured that was never an option and he pressed my hand to the fire. This book is a epistolary masterpiece of rage and survival in a world that hates you. The prose is so strong and grounded in a homosexual Caribbean vernacular that brings electrical sparks to the long novel. In terms of The Booker I don’t see how this can’t win. James’s dexterity and virtuosity as a writer is on full display. This book is a comittment but it’s one I was so grateful to devote myself to. Like Angel Down, it transcends itself, what it is, through form. It does things only fiction can do. And for that, I think we have our Booker winner.
July 3, 2026
This was one of the most intense books I’ve read in a long time. It was, at times, a difficult read but also an important and timely one.
Set in Jamaica during the late 1980s and 1990s, The Disappearers begins with a group of gay men rehearsing for a stage play. When a violent mob attacks them, their lives splinter in ways that extend far beyond the physical brutality of that night. What follows is less a story about the attack itself than about its aftermath: grief, guilt, trauma, and revenge. It’s also about the many ways people disappear, whether by force, by fear, or simply by trying to stay alive.
Marlon James refuses to soften any of it. The violence is graphic, the sexual content is explicit, and the emotional weight is constant. This is not a novel interested in making its readers comfortable, and I think that’s entirely the point. James is forcing us to confront a history that has too often been ignored and to witness the devastating effects of hatred and systemic homophobia. The brutality isn’t gratuitous; it’s integral to the story he’s telling.
There were moments that were incredibly powerful, particularly in the way James explores the lingering effects of trauma. I also appreciated the novel’s structure, which gradually reveals what happened from multiple perspectives and shows how one horrific event ripples through so many lives. The title itself takes on multiple meanings as the story unfolds, touching not only on those who literally vanish, but on erased identities, silenced histories, and lives lived in the shadows.
That said, this wasn’t a book I would say enjoyed reading. It was almost unrelentingly intensity, and I often found myself needing to put it down before I was ready to continue. While I admired what James was doing, I struggled to fully connect with the characters amid the sheer heaviness of the material.
However, I have no doubt this book will resonate deeply with many readers, especially those who appreciate literary fiction that asks difficult questions and refuses easy answers. For me though, I respected the novel more than loved it.
Set in Jamaica during the late 1980s and 1990s, The Disappearers begins with a group of gay men rehearsing for a stage play. When a violent mob attacks them, their lives splinter in ways that extend far beyond the physical brutality of that night. What follows is less a story about the attack itself than about its aftermath: grief, guilt, trauma, and revenge. It’s also about the many ways people disappear, whether by force, by fear, or simply by trying to stay alive.
Marlon James refuses to soften any of it. The violence is graphic, the sexual content is explicit, and the emotional weight is constant. This is not a novel interested in making its readers comfortable, and I think that’s entirely the point. James is forcing us to confront a history that has too often been ignored and to witness the devastating effects of hatred and systemic homophobia. The brutality isn’t gratuitous; it’s integral to the story he’s telling.
There were moments that were incredibly powerful, particularly in the way James explores the lingering effects of trauma. I also appreciated the novel’s structure, which gradually reveals what happened from multiple perspectives and shows how one horrific event ripples through so many lives. The title itself takes on multiple meanings as the story unfolds, touching not only on those who literally vanish, but on erased identities, silenced histories, and lives lived in the shadows.
That said, this wasn’t a book I would say enjoyed reading. It was almost unrelentingly intensity, and I often found myself needing to put it down before I was ready to continue. While I admired what James was doing, I struggled to fully connect with the characters amid the sheer heaviness of the material.
However, I have no doubt this book will resonate deeply with many readers, especially those who appreciate literary fiction that asks difficult questions and refuses easy answers. For me though, I respected the novel more than loved it.
Read
May 16, 2026 I would like to thank Net Galley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This book had me in a chokehold.
I thought I knew what I was getting myself into. I consumed A Brief History of Seven Killings and I also read Black Leopard, Red Wolf. I thought I knew what to expect. I was wrong. I wish I could have read this book in paperback. I did miss flicking back to the character list in previous books.
I think it does follow a certain formula that Marlon James excels in. There are a string of characters and lots of plotlines going on but with one plotline that is at the heart of the story. You have no idea what's going on for a while until you do. Then, it hits you.
I found this book extremely difficult. I normally binge read a book and found I couldn't do this. Perhaps, this is because I was reading this book at my most busiest, stressful time at work or maybe it was this book. This book haunted me. I thought about it whilst I was doing other things and I craved its return.
The title is so clever.
Have you disappeared if no one misses you?
I am still in a state after the ending. I don't know what else to say but read it.
This book had me in a chokehold.
I thought I knew what I was getting myself into. I consumed A Brief History of Seven Killings and I also read Black Leopard, Red Wolf. I thought I knew what to expect. I was wrong. I wish I could have read this book in paperback. I did miss flicking back to the character list in previous books.
I think it does follow a certain formula that Marlon James excels in. There are a string of characters and lots of plotlines going on but with one plotline that is at the heart of the story. You have no idea what's going on for a while until you do. Then, it hits you.
I found this book extremely difficult. I normally binge read a book and found I couldn't do this. Perhaps, this is because I was reading this book at my most busiest, stressful time at work or maybe it was this book. This book haunted me. I thought about it whilst I was doing other things and I craved its return.
The title is so clever.
Have you disappeared if no one misses you?
I am still in a state after the ending. I don't know what else to say but read it.
July 29, 2026
In 1988 Kingston, Jamaica, a mob attacks a group of eight gay men rehearsing a queer play. This horrific act of homophobic violence lies at the heart of the novel as we follow the victims, some of whom disappear literally, others who disappear while remaining very much present, across nearly two decades.
A favourite of 2026 and, I suspect, a favourite of a lifetime. The last sentence of this book made me weep and it left me paralysed with a sense of grief… I ended up reading that sentence again and again. The experience of reading The Disappearers has been difficult difficult difficult in ways I can barely express.
There is the physical violence at the heart of the novel, but there are other forms of violence too - rage, trauma, memory, grief, the loss of self, and the constant fear of merely existing as a self that is socially unacceptable. There is also the violence of what the book evokes beyond its pages, of what queer people are living through right now, especially those with the most marginalised identities. It is difficult to think about the word "happy" in "Happy Pride" while living through fascism.
James's writing is visceral, as always. It gets under your skin in the most uncomfortable ways. Yet the novel is not without joy or hope. Reading it made me want to laugh, then cry, then laugh again, then cry again. It is so jarring, so beautiful, and so tender even in its most brutal moments. The structure, the narrative voices, and the dialogue all work together to create a feeling that shifts between discomfort, exhilaration, and profound grief. It is one of those books I wish I could consume completely, so that some part of it can remain with me forever.
A favourite of 2026 and, I suspect, a favourite of a lifetime. The last sentence of this book made me weep and it left me paralysed with a sense of grief… I ended up reading that sentence again and again. The experience of reading The Disappearers has been difficult difficult difficult in ways I can barely express.
There is the physical violence at the heart of the novel, but there are other forms of violence too - rage, trauma, memory, grief, the loss of self, and the constant fear of merely existing as a self that is socially unacceptable. There is also the violence of what the book evokes beyond its pages, of what queer people are living through right now, especially those with the most marginalised identities. It is difficult to think about the word "happy" in "Happy Pride" while living through fascism.
James's writing is visceral, as always. It gets under your skin in the most uncomfortable ways. Yet the novel is not without joy or hope. Reading it made me want to laugh, then cry, then laugh again, then cry again. It is so jarring, so beautiful, and so tender even in its most brutal moments. The structure, the narrative voices, and the dialogue all work together to create a feeling that shifts between discomfort, exhilaration, and profound grief. It is one of those books I wish I could consume completely, so that some part of it can remain with me forever.
August 16, 2026
I genuinely believe Marlon James is one of the greatest writers of our time. He’s certainly one of the greatest I’ve read and easily one of my top five writers of all time. His ability to construct a story, create characters who feel completely alive, and pull you into their world is undeniable.
He pulls me into a story. He gets me comfortable. He makes me laugh. He lets me settle into the lives of his characters, and then, out of nowhere, he punches me directly in the gut. It’s almost like he’s saying, Yo, wake up. Don’t get too comfortable. I’m telling you a real-ass story.
The Disappearers was no different.
Set primarily in Jamaica and spanning several years, the novel centers around a group of young men brought together to perform a controversial play about homosexuality. During one of their rehearsals, they are brutally attacked by a group that includes a famous musician, members of his posse, and members of the police. What happens that night is horrific, and what follows is tragedy after tragedy.
Because of who these men are—or, more specifically, because of who society believes them to be—there is very little outrage over what happens to them. Their sexuality doesn’t just make them targets of the violence; it makes their suffering easier for everyone else to dismiss. And that’s where this novel becomes so much bigger than the attack itself.
The Disappearers is about homosexuality, identity, family, friendship, religion, masculinity, mental health, AIDS, violence, revenge and, above everything else, survival.
These men are navigating a world where simply being suspected of being gay can put them in danger. Being seen with the wrong person, being in the wrong neighborhood, looking at another man the wrong way—any of it can make you a target. You can be beaten, arrested, thrown out of your home, humiliated or killed, and the people who are supposed to protect you may be some of the very people participating in the violence against you.
James doesn’t sanitize any of this for the reader. The language is ugly because the world these men are living in is ugly toward them. The slurs are there. The homophobia is there. The violence is graphic. The sex is graphic. The cruelty is there in all of its ugliness. But so is the humanity.
There’s friendship. There’s love. There’s sex and laughter and foolishness. There are moments when these men are simply young men trying to live their lives. And I think that’s part of what makes the darkness hit as hard as it does. James allows you to see them as complete human beings while constantly reminding you how easily the world around them can decide that their humanity doesn’t matter. And despite everything that happens in this book, there was never a moment when I thought James was pushing something simply for shock value. I never found myself saying, Okay, come on now. You’re doing too much.
The Disappearers is an epic novel. It’s dark, difficult, graphic, heartbreaking, funny in places, and deeply human. It’s a book that asks you to have patience and trust where James is taking you. And if you can do that, I think it’s worth every second.
For me, this was easily a five-star read.
At this point, Marlon James could announce that he’s writing a 600-page novel about Little Miss Muffet sitting on her damn tuffet, and I’d be somewhere looking for the preorder link. Whatever this man writes, I’m reading it.
★★★★★
He pulls me into a story. He gets me comfortable. He makes me laugh. He lets me settle into the lives of his characters, and then, out of nowhere, he punches me directly in the gut. It’s almost like he’s saying, Yo, wake up. Don’t get too comfortable. I’m telling you a real-ass story.
The Disappearers was no different.
Set primarily in Jamaica and spanning several years, the novel centers around a group of young men brought together to perform a controversial play about homosexuality. During one of their rehearsals, they are brutally attacked by a group that includes a famous musician, members of his posse, and members of the police. What happens that night is horrific, and what follows is tragedy after tragedy.
Because of who these men are—or, more specifically, because of who society believes them to be—there is very little outrage over what happens to them. Their sexuality doesn’t just make them targets of the violence; it makes their suffering easier for everyone else to dismiss. And that’s where this novel becomes so much bigger than the attack itself.
The Disappearers is about homosexuality, identity, family, friendship, religion, masculinity, mental health, AIDS, violence, revenge and, above everything else, survival.
These men are navigating a world where simply being suspected of being gay can put them in danger. Being seen with the wrong person, being in the wrong neighborhood, looking at another man the wrong way—any of it can make you a target. You can be beaten, arrested, thrown out of your home, humiliated or killed, and the people who are supposed to protect you may be some of the very people participating in the violence against you.
James doesn’t sanitize any of this for the reader. The language is ugly because the world these men are living in is ugly toward them. The slurs are there. The homophobia is there. The violence is graphic. The sex is graphic. The cruelty is there in all of its ugliness. But so is the humanity.
There’s friendship. There’s love. There’s sex and laughter and foolishness. There are moments when these men are simply young men trying to live their lives. And I think that’s part of what makes the darkness hit as hard as it does. James allows you to see them as complete human beings while constantly reminding you how easily the world around them can decide that their humanity doesn’t matter. And despite everything that happens in this book, there was never a moment when I thought James was pushing something simply for shock value. I never found myself saying, Okay, come on now. You’re doing too much.
The Disappearers is an epic novel. It’s dark, difficult, graphic, heartbreaking, funny in places, and deeply human. It’s a book that asks you to have patience and trust where James is taking you. And if you can do that, I think it’s worth every second.
For me, this was easily a five-star read.
At this point, Marlon James could announce that he’s writing a 600-page novel about Little Miss Muffet sitting on her damn tuffet, and I’d be somewhere looking for the preorder link. Whatever this man writes, I’m reading it.
★★★★★
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 10, 2026
Thank you to the publisher for the gifted eARC.
Reading this book is a rollercoaster. I started out thinking it would be a funny book. Then it got dark. Then really violent — to the point where I wanted to stop reading. At one point, it was so intense I genuinely thought about never picking it up again. And then, just when I thought I had settled into it, I was hit with an ending that left me in tears.
And it was so worth it.
Set in 1980s Jamaica, eight men decide to put on the country’s first openly gay play as the country grapples with homophobia. But after a brutal attack, each man is forced to confront his fate, identity, and place in a society that refuses to accept him. Some choose to disappear, some choose to investigate those who disappeared, and one… I’ll leave that surprise for you.
At its core, DISAPPEARERS examines what it means to disappear — in families that reject you, in a country that refuses to see you, and in a society that denies your right to exist.
DISAPPEARERS exposes the violence and cruelty faced by gay men in 1980s/90s Jamaica. James doesn’t shy away from depicting, often in graphic detail, the harm inflicted on the queer community, as well as the ways violence can also emerge within it.
The multiple POVs and shifts in time add depth to the story, showing how class, race, and generation shape how these men understand themselves and each other. (It’ll probably make for an easier reading experience to have a physical copy). The novel also forces the reader to sit with the aftermath of the attack and the different ways each survivor responds to it. James is especially skilled at giving each voice a distinct texture, allowing the reader to fully inhabit each perspective despite the complexity of the narrative structure.
At times, DISAPPEARERS became so emotionally intense that I felt physically ill and had to look away. And that feels entirely deliberate — James’ writing almost dares the reader to keep going.
Because it is so easy to look away. To assume we already know enough. To dismiss it as “unnecessary violence.” To believe we are powerless, and therefore only observers.
But that desire to look away is exactly what the book refuses to allow.
DISAPPEARERS explores guilt, grief, rage, and shame through a layered narrative that demands a lot from its readers. It is a novel that takes time to read, and even more time to sit with. A devastating, passionate work that asks difficult questions about complicity, culpability, and what it means to witness suffering without turning away.
And maybe that’s why I almost wanted to stop reading. Because sometimes the hardest thing a book can ask you to do is keep looking.
I would love to see DISAPPEARERS win the Booker prize, because that’ll encourage more readers to engage with a difficult text like this. (But I think it has more NBA vibes than Booker 😅)
Reading this book is a rollercoaster. I started out thinking it would be a funny book. Then it got dark. Then really violent — to the point where I wanted to stop reading. At one point, it was so intense I genuinely thought about never picking it up again. And then, just when I thought I had settled into it, I was hit with an ending that left me in tears.
And it was so worth it.
Set in 1980s Jamaica, eight men decide to put on the country’s first openly gay play as the country grapples with homophobia. But after a brutal attack, each man is forced to confront his fate, identity, and place in a society that refuses to accept him. Some choose to disappear, some choose to investigate those who disappeared, and one… I’ll leave that surprise for you.
At its core, DISAPPEARERS examines what it means to disappear — in families that reject you, in a country that refuses to see you, and in a society that denies your right to exist.
DISAPPEARERS exposes the violence and cruelty faced by gay men in 1980s/90s Jamaica. James doesn’t shy away from depicting, often in graphic detail, the harm inflicted on the queer community, as well as the ways violence can also emerge within it.
The multiple POVs and shifts in time add depth to the story, showing how class, race, and generation shape how these men understand themselves and each other. (It’ll probably make for an easier reading experience to have a physical copy). The novel also forces the reader to sit with the aftermath of the attack and the different ways each survivor responds to it. James is especially skilled at giving each voice a distinct texture, allowing the reader to fully inhabit each perspective despite the complexity of the narrative structure.
At times, DISAPPEARERS became so emotionally intense that I felt physically ill and had to look away. And that feels entirely deliberate — James’ writing almost dares the reader to keep going.
Because it is so easy to look away. To assume we already know enough. To dismiss it as “unnecessary violence.” To believe we are powerless, and therefore only observers.
But that desire to look away is exactly what the book refuses to allow.
DISAPPEARERS explores guilt, grief, rage, and shame through a layered narrative that demands a lot from its readers. It is a novel that takes time to read, and even more time to sit with. A devastating, passionate work that asks difficult questions about complicity, culpability, and what it means to witness suffering without turning away.
And maybe that’s why I almost wanted to stop reading. Because sometimes the hardest thing a book can ask you to do is keep looking.
I would love to see DISAPPEARERS win the Booker prize, because that’ll encourage more readers to engage with a difficult text like this. (But I think it has more NBA vibes than Booker 😅)
Read
August 16, 2026The Disappearers is a towering achievement in fiction. Marlon James chronicles the unspeakable atrocities that homosexual individuals in Jamaica faced outside the home and within it, for the "crime" of being themselves.
We follow a group of eight men who come together to rehearse for a play about gay men in prison and are brutally attacked for doing so. We get multiple perspectives - from the protagonists to the attackers, horrifying and heart-wrenching in their detailing of the violence and brutality.
Marlon James is unwavering in his determination to describe the relentless humiliation and persecution that began right from the school years and continued lifelong. And the reader cannot look away either. It seems like the only option left to our protagonists and others is to disappear. In a way, this book is a chronicle of the multi-faceted nature of such disappearances - be it withdrawing from society, killing one's sense of self or ceasing to exist altogether. As James asks at one point in the book through one of the protagonists - can one really disappear if one's absence is not noticed at all?
I had to put this book down multiple times while reading, such was the emotional impact. Having read Book of Night Women and Brief History of Seven Killings by the same author, it seems thematically apt that James would render this subject with such care. I consider this to be his best work so far and indeed, one of the best books I have read.
A strong recommendation to any reader for this unflinching portrayal of how much a marginalised community endures and what it does to them, day by day, year after year, decade after decade. The star rating system falls short of expressing how I feel about this book - it will suffice to say that The Disappearers left me devastated and speechless.
We follow a group of eight men who come together to rehearse for a play about gay men in prison and are brutally attacked for doing so. We get multiple perspectives - from the protagonists to the attackers, horrifying and heart-wrenching in their detailing of the violence and brutality.
Marlon James is unwavering in his determination to describe the relentless humiliation and persecution that began right from the school years and continued lifelong. And the reader cannot look away either. It seems like the only option left to our protagonists and others is to disappear. In a way, this book is a chronicle of the multi-faceted nature of such disappearances - be it withdrawing from society, killing one's sense of self or ceasing to exist altogether. As James asks at one point in the book through one of the protagonists - can one really disappear if one's absence is not noticed at all?
I had to put this book down multiple times while reading, such was the emotional impact. Having read Book of Night Women and Brief History of Seven Killings by the same author, it seems thematically apt that James would render this subject with such care. I consider this to be his best work so far and indeed, one of the best books I have read.
A strong recommendation to any reader for this unflinching portrayal of how much a marginalised community endures and what it does to them, day by day, year after year, decade after decade. The star rating system falls short of expressing how I feel about this book - it will suffice to say that The Disappearers left me devastated and speechless.
September 5, 2026
James is confronting homophobia and examining the psychological effects of trauma. To do that he has written a book filled with explicit sex and graphic violence. It is deliberately provocative. I can appreciate his point, and I can also say I would not have read this novel without its nomination to the Booker longlist. Pick it up only if this kind of content is something you can handle. It is not my type of book at all.
The book does what James sets out to do but I did not enjoy reading it.
The book does what James sets out to do but I did not enjoy reading it.
Read
June 13, 2026Intense on so many levels
August 29, 2026
What a tour de force. This took me awhile to read because it was so intense, and it dragged on a little too long, but this sprawling epic is an important book.
Starting in 1980s Jamaica during the AIDS crisis, this wide-ranging book covers a lewd play put on by a group of gay men, one of the few sanctuaries where they can be themselves in a country determined to kill them for existing. They are brutally attacked during one of their rehearsals, and the book follows the effects of their trauma throughout the years. From Eddy who likes domesticated gayness and becomes a lawyer, to Jordan who becomes a battyboy Robin Hood on a revenge spree, to Matt Chin who tries to pray the gay away.
This often gratuitously violent, blood-soaked book had a Blaxpoitation feel to it, reminding me of that movie Is God Is in a way. Take your revenge because the cops are your oppressors too. This time in Jamaica was so harsh and violent for gay men, it's a testament that gayness isn't a choice. As one woman asked them, if you could have the safety of a loving family with a wife and children but you pick being gay and constantly targeted and attacked, they said survival is all we hope for as long as we can be who we are. There were many beautiful, heartbreaking moments like that.
The format of the book was also quite compelling; it didn't read like a novel. It was told in the voice and cadence of the men involved in the play so it could often be dense and hard to read since I don't know Jamaican dialects. It starts off in diary entries, moves into transcripts of a reporter interviewing them, to letters, to second-person, like a twist on the epistolary novel that made the bloody action visceral and real in a way that often turned my stomach.
Even so, I think this is a part of history that we shouldn't look away from, even if it is uncomfortable and even traumatizing for the reader in many ways.
It was hard to know who to root for, really. Everyone was an unlikable character in this book. The straight characters were all hypocrites. There was a bit of misogyny at times. In the end I found myself rooting for their survival. Even if they didn't lead happy lives. I wasn't rooting for trite, performative sayings like "living their truth," I just wanted them to live.
This book won't be for everyone, and it often read like a Tarantino film, but it will stay with me for a long time in all its brutal, blood-soaked impact.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Starting in 1980s Jamaica during the AIDS crisis, this wide-ranging book covers a lewd play put on by a group of gay men, one of the few sanctuaries where they can be themselves in a country determined to kill them for existing. They are brutally attacked during one of their rehearsals, and the book follows the effects of their trauma throughout the years. From Eddy who likes domesticated gayness and becomes a lawyer, to Jordan who becomes a battyboy Robin Hood on a revenge spree, to Matt Chin who tries to pray the gay away.
This often gratuitously violent, blood-soaked book had a Blaxpoitation feel to it, reminding me of that movie Is God Is in a way. Take your revenge because the cops are your oppressors too. This time in Jamaica was so harsh and violent for gay men, it's a testament that gayness isn't a choice. As one woman asked them, if you could have the safety of a loving family with a wife and children but you pick being gay and constantly targeted and attacked, they said survival is all we hope for as long as we can be who we are. There were many beautiful, heartbreaking moments like that.
The format of the book was also quite compelling; it didn't read like a novel. It was told in the voice and cadence of the men involved in the play so it could often be dense and hard to read since I don't know Jamaican dialects. It starts off in diary entries, moves into transcripts of a reporter interviewing them, to letters, to second-person, like a twist on the epistolary novel that made the bloody action visceral and real in a way that often turned my stomach.
Even so, I think this is a part of history that we shouldn't look away from, even if it is uncomfortable and even traumatizing for the reader in many ways.
It was hard to know who to root for, really. Everyone was an unlikable character in this book. The straight characters were all hypocrites. There was a bit of misogyny at times. In the end I found myself rooting for their survival. Even if they didn't lead happy lives. I wasn't rooting for trite, performative sayings like "living their truth," I just wanted them to live.
This book won't be for everyone, and it often read like a Tarantino film, but it will stay with me for a long time in all its brutal, blood-soaked impact.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.
September 1, 2026
I took some time to think it through and here I am with a review even though I am still trying to recover from this book. The Disappearers is one of the most traumatising reading experiences I’ve had in a long time. It hit me so hard that I genuinely considered DNF’ing it just at some point. The book is so vivid and intense - the violence, the beating, the death, the fear - that it becomes physically difficult to keep going.
But I pushed through this brutality and I am very glad I did because then I could witness how brilliantly Marlon James follows haracters through the aftermath. Watching them deal with trauma is heartbreaking but also strangely compelling. Their emotional survival becomes the real story.
And, you know what, there are also twists! James throws in moments you absolutely do not expect, the kind that make you stop, blink, and rethink everything you thought you understood.
What disturbed me the most, though, was how familiar the hostility felt. The book is set in 1988, but reading it in 2026, it’s impossible not to see how homosexuality is still prosecuted, policed, and rejected in so many countries. The violence may be historical, but the prejudice is painfully current. That makes the book even harder — and even more necessary.
If you’re a fan of A Little Life, this is absolutely a book you should pick up! It’s not an easy read. It’s not a comfortable read, but it is a powerful ands unforgettable one.
I was very uncertain how many stars I should give. My emotional rollercoaster during reading went between 3 and 5. But I think the overall power and spirit of the book makes me give it 5 stars. I am definitely seeing it at the Booker prize shortlist this year (cannot judge about being the winner as I have not read all the books from the list yet).
I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-arc for review.
But I pushed through this brutality and I am very glad I did because then I could witness how brilliantly Marlon James follows haracters through the aftermath. Watching them deal with trauma is heartbreaking but also strangely compelling. Their emotional survival becomes the real story.
And, you know what, there are also twists! James throws in moments you absolutely do not expect, the kind that make you stop, blink, and rethink everything you thought you understood.
What disturbed me the most, though, was how familiar the hostility felt. The book is set in 1988, but reading it in 2026, it’s impossible not to see how homosexuality is still prosecuted, policed, and rejected in so many countries. The violence may be historical, but the prejudice is painfully current. That makes the book even harder — and even more necessary.
If you’re a fan of A Little Life, this is absolutely a book you should pick up! It’s not an easy read. It’s not a comfortable read, but it is a powerful ands unforgettable one.
I was very uncertain how many stars I should give. My emotional rollercoaster during reading went between 3 and 5. But I think the overall power and spirit of the book makes me give it 5 stars. I am definitely seeing it at the Booker prize shortlist this year (cannot judge about being the winner as I have not read all the books from the list yet).
I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-arc for review.
September 5, 2026
Kingston, Jamaica, 1988. A mob of murderous homophobes storm a rehearsal for Fortune and Men’s Eyes and savagely attack the eight gay men acting in the play. One is killed, others are maimed, and all are forever marked by the violence. The Disappearers follows the survivors as they attempt to go on with their lives—living under the weight of trauma, in the shadow of homophobia, state indifference, and a culture determined to make them vanish.
James situates this ordeal in a decade when queer lives in Jamaica were systematically denied visibility. Homosexuality was criminalized, police protection was absent, and churches preached intolerance. The men’s recovery unfolds against the backdrop of Kingston’s politics, reggae and dancehall culture, and the everyday language of the streets, but always under the shadow of laws and communities that sought to erase them.
The novel is about longing, desire, hatred, endurance, and survival. And sex—lots and lots of sex. It asks what it means to keep going when society wants you gone, and whether art, time, memory, or community can preserve lives otherwise consigned to silence.
Monumental in scope and difficult to read, The Disappearers insists on being faced—an ordeal, yes, but one that leaves its mark.
James situates this ordeal in a decade when queer lives in Jamaica were systematically denied visibility. Homosexuality was criminalized, police protection was absent, and churches preached intolerance. The men’s recovery unfolds against the backdrop of Kingston’s politics, reggae and dancehall culture, and the everyday language of the streets, but always under the shadow of laws and communities that sought to erase them.
The novel is about longing, desire, hatred, endurance, and survival. And sex—lots and lots of sex. It asks what it means to keep going when society wants you gone, and whether art, time, memory, or community can preserve lives otherwise consigned to silence.
Monumental in scope and difficult to read, The Disappearers insists on being faced—an ordeal, yes, but one that leaves its mark.
September 6, 2026
This was torture to read. It has a lot of value but it is explicit in oh so much -- especially violence and sex. It is on the longlist for the 2026 Booker. It would be a legitimate winner but I so did not enjoy it.
Did Not Finish
August 11, 2026Soft DNF. I want to love this, and it’s well written (of course). I loved A Brief History and The Book of Night Women. But that was years ago, and I think I’m just not in a place right now to be able to appreciate this book, sadly.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I’m speechless. I’m just gaping at the screen, trying to bring all my emotions together to form a single coherent thought that I can write down.
Graphic. Disturbing. Uncomfortable. Sexual. Violent.
Immersive.
Heartbreaking.
It’s 1988. Kingston, Jamaica. A group of men meet for play rehearsal. The play is a queer play, and the men who meet are all gay. Being set smack dab in the AIDs epidemic, you can imagine how kind the world is to these gay men. You can imagine the hatred, anger, violence, and fear. But your imagination will only take you so far as to just how bad it is. Marlon James is going to take you a bit (okay, a lot) further.
This is not for the faint of heart. Marlon James does not give a fuck if he’s making you uncomfortable. I’m pretty sure he relishes it.
One night, the men participating in the rehearsal are violently attacked. I thought I was prepared for this part of the book. After all, I’m already told in the synopsis that it will happen. I was not prepared.
The POVs in this book shift with each part/section, and the author made the decision to shift the POVs from the victims to those of the attackers. And it’s fucking brutal. I never want to be in the heads of these filthy bigoted assaulters again.
The remainder of the book is mostly about the aftermath. How this attack changes the men. Deeper stories about their lives before and after. How they are treated by their families and by society. How they “disappear.”
This book won’t be for everyone. I can guarantee that there will be a slew of DNFs and low ratings. Why?
There is a lot of violence and a lot of sex. I mean, a lot of sex. A lot of descriptive sex. I’m a straight woman and am fairly confident I could have good gay male sex after reading this if I was Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo’d into a properly equipped male body tomorrow. Pearl clutchers would be snapping their chain of pearls from clutching so tightly. But (to the non-clutchers) it doesn’t feel gratuitous as much as it feels necessary and authentic.
Speaking of authentic, this takes some work to read. It’s not something to skim. The dialect is a mashup of Jamaican Patois and slang. While I loved this because it makes the whole experience so immersive, I could see it frustrating people looking for an easier read.
I just really need to drive this home. Nothing about this is easy.
This is a long book. A long book that doesn’t always feel like it’s rewarding you for sticking with it . . . unless your idea of a reward is more distress and discomfort. I closed it feeling spent. Drained. Weak and disoriented.
This isn’t a book to enjoy. It’s a book to experience. To experience laughter and rage and discomfort and heartache and despair and hope and tears.
The brutality and rawness of this story could have gone very, very wrong, but Marlon James’ writing is insane.
Oh no. I’m going to start gushing.
I’m going to stop before I just start (keep?) gushing.
Just read the damn thing.
Thank you to NetGalley and Riverhead | Riverhead Books (and Marlon James – I’m just going to pretend that he handpicked me for this arc because of mutual admiration) for providing me with a digital ARC of this book. It felt like winning the lottery if winning the lottery felt like drowning in despair while simultaneously worshipping the creator of that despair.
5 Stars
Graphic. Disturbing. Uncomfortable. Sexual. Violent.
Immersive.
Heartbreaking.
It’s 1988. Kingston, Jamaica. A group of men meet for play rehearsal. The play is a queer play, and the men who meet are all gay. Being set smack dab in the AIDs epidemic, you can imagine how kind the world is to these gay men. You can imagine the hatred, anger, violence, and fear. But your imagination will only take you so far as to just how bad it is. Marlon James is going to take you a bit (okay, a lot) further.
This is not for the faint of heart. Marlon James does not give a fuck if he’s making you uncomfortable. I’m pretty sure he relishes it.
One night, the men participating in the rehearsal are violently attacked. I thought I was prepared for this part of the book. After all, I’m already told in the synopsis that it will happen. I was not prepared.
The POVs in this book shift with each part/section, and the author made the decision to shift the POVs from the victims to those of the attackers. And it’s fucking brutal. I never want to be in the heads of these filthy bigoted assaulters again.
The remainder of the book is mostly about the aftermath. How this attack changes the men. Deeper stories about their lives before and after. How they are treated by their families and by society. How they “disappear.”
This book won’t be for everyone. I can guarantee that there will be a slew of DNFs and low ratings. Why?
There is a lot of violence and a lot of sex. I mean, a lot of sex. A lot of descriptive sex. I’m a straight woman and am fairly confident I could have good gay male sex after reading this if I was Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo’d into a properly equipped male body tomorrow. Pearl clutchers would be snapping their chain of pearls from clutching so tightly. But (to the non-clutchers) it doesn’t feel gratuitous as much as it feels necessary and authentic.
Speaking of authentic, this takes some work to read. It’s not something to skim. The dialect is a mashup of Jamaican Patois and slang. While I loved this because it makes the whole experience so immersive, I could see it frustrating people looking for an easier read.
I just really need to drive this home. Nothing about this is easy.
This is a long book. A long book that doesn’t always feel like it’s rewarding you for sticking with it . . . unless your idea of a reward is more distress and discomfort. I closed it feeling spent. Drained. Weak and disoriented.
This isn’t a book to enjoy. It’s a book to experience. To experience laughter and rage and discomfort and heartache and despair and hope and tears.
The brutality and rawness of this story could have gone very, very wrong, but Marlon James’ writing is insane.
Oh no. I’m going to start gushing.
I’m going to stop before I just start (keep?) gushing.
Just read the damn thing.
Thank you to NetGalley and Riverhead | Riverhead Books (and Marlon James – I’m just going to pretend that he handpicked me for this arc because of mutual admiration) for providing me with a digital ARC of this book. It felt like winning the lottery if winning the lottery felt like drowning in despair while simultaneously worshipping the creator of that despair.
5 Stars
September 5, 2026
An emotional and gut-churning story of gay men in Jamaica, facing extreme violence and social hatred. There are some hard but honest themes of survival, identity, grief, revenge, and justice. Fascinatingly complex characters and a story that is viscerally real.
While I give this book credit for ambition, I have to say, this was not a pleasure to read. I think the biggest part I cannot abide is the length of this book. So much of this felt unnecessarily rote and just plain repetitive. Similarly, while I can appreciate the effort in James’s writing style, I fear I just couldn’t really get into it at times and felt lost at what I was reading.
It’s a shame, because I was so looking forward to this and excited to hear everyone’s hype around this, but I am one of the dissenting voices that just cannot whole-heartedly recommend this.
While I give this book credit for ambition, I have to say, this was not a pleasure to read. I think the biggest part I cannot abide is the length of this book. So much of this felt unnecessarily rote and just plain repetitive. Similarly, while I can appreciate the effort in James’s writing style, I fear I just couldn’t really get into it at times and felt lost at what I was reading.
It’s a shame, because I was so looking forward to this and excited to hear everyone’s hype around this, but I am one of the dissenting voices that just cannot whole-heartedly recommend this.
August 31, 2026
melancholic, challenging, hauntingly realistic, pulsatingly tumultuous & brimming with emotion.
This book depicts how deep-rooted & violent homophobia is in the Caribbean (this is set in Jamaica). It is graphically described.
This book is culturally accurate.
I had to pause this a few times whilst reading it. This is an incredibly emotionally & psychologically challenging read.
Shows the importance of human connection & community as well as the longing & need for acceptance.
I will think of this book for a long time. Marlon James knows how to leave an impression.
I was on the verge of tears and my heart ached for this entire book and I sobbed at the end.
Thank you NetGalley, Riverhead Books & Marlon James for giving me the eARC in exchange for an honest review.
This book depicts how deep-rooted & violent homophobia is in the Caribbean (this is set in Jamaica). It is graphically described.
This book is culturally accurate.
I had to pause this a few times whilst reading it. This is an incredibly emotionally & psychologically challenging read.
Shows the importance of human connection & community as well as the longing & need for acceptance.
I will think of this book for a long time. Marlon James knows how to leave an impression.
I was on the verge of tears and my heart ached for this entire book and I sobbed at the end.
Thank you NetGalley, Riverhead Books & Marlon James for giving me the eARC in exchange for an honest review.
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August 30, 2026Le recensioni stellari che sta ricevendo questo libro...
Sicuramente tra le prossime letture, forse abbiamo una grande uscita finalmente quest'anno (almeno in ambito anglofono)
Sicuramente tra le prossime letture, forse abbiamo una grande uscita finalmente quest'anno (almeno in ambito anglofono)
August 21, 2026
I feel bad about this as NetGalley and Penguin sent me a review copy and it’s been longlisted for the Booker but I found this turgid, frequently incomprehensible and practically unreadable. Whatever merit others see in it I’m afraid has circumnavigated me by about 12 million light years.
August 30, 2026
Marlon James is a brilliant writer. This is only my second book by him, and the way he brings his characters to life feels almost magical.
The Disappearers follows several gay men in 1980s Jamaica, before and after a violent tragedy strikes their circle and alters their lives forever. It’s a intimate look into their lives and into gay Jamaica, exploring how we confront hate both the hate we experience and the hate we give, the hate we direct toward ourselves and toward others, and how we survive it all.
This book was challenging for me in more ways than one. The book is written in Jamaican Patois, which was a struggle for me to get used to at first, but felt completely necessary to the authenticity of the characters and the setting. There are also horrific depictions of hate crimes that made me physically sick and lingered with me like a cloud for days afterward. As a queer person, I found myself thinking a lot about the privilege I have to live openly and be myself, something I admittedly don’t always stop to consider. This book forced me to sit with that privilege in some uncomfortable ways.
I highly recommend this book with the caveat that you should absolutely check the trigger warnings, take your time with it, and be patient with yourself if you find parts of it difficult to get through. For me, the book was worth the effort.
A really stunning piece of art.
Thank you to NetGalley and Riverhead for the ARC.
The Disappearers follows several gay men in 1980s Jamaica, before and after a violent tragedy strikes their circle and alters their lives forever. It’s a intimate look into their lives and into gay Jamaica, exploring how we confront hate both the hate we experience and the hate we give, the hate we direct toward ourselves and toward others, and how we survive it all.
This book was challenging for me in more ways than one. The book is written in Jamaican Patois, which was a struggle for me to get used to at first, but felt completely necessary to the authenticity of the characters and the setting. There are also horrific depictions of hate crimes that made me physically sick and lingered with me like a cloud for days afterward. As a queer person, I found myself thinking a lot about the privilege I have to live openly and be myself, something I admittedly don’t always stop to consider. This book forced me to sit with that privilege in some uncomfortable ways.
I highly recommend this book with the caveat that you should absolutely check the trigger warnings, take your time with it, and be patient with yourself if you find parts of it difficult to get through. For me, the book was worth the effort.
A really stunning piece of art.
Thank you to NetGalley and Riverhead for the ARC.
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