Can someone vanish if their existence isn't acknowledged as valid to begin with? That is the question driving Booker Prize winner Marlon James's The Disappearers, a massive, unsparing reckoning of a novel, spanning more than 600 pages.
The story opens in Kingston, Jamaica, in May 1988. Eight gay men, all strangers, gather to rehearse John Herbert's Fortune and Men's Eyes, a play set inside a prison. The cast includes Havelock Titus, the director; 18-year-old Eddy Porteous; and Jordan Brown, who possesses a sharp, defensive bluntness. Rounding out the group are Omar Joseph, Rainford Ellis, Orrin Turner, Matt Chin, and Clive Lim.
Their world shatters when a violent mob attacks their rehearsal space. By sunrise, Omar is dead, Rainford is blinded, and Orrin and Matt, the titular "disappearers," have vanished into the Kingston heat. The narrative maps the ensuing wreckage over several years through a fragmented structure of diary entries, interviews, letters, and even the perspectives of the attackers themselves. This formal choice forces readers directly into the mob's mindset, refusing to offer the safety of a detached vantage point. In The Disappearers, James refuses to turn perpetrators into caricatures; he presents the homophobia of ordinary citizens as casual and omnipresent.
James (Black Leopard, Red Wolf; A Brief History of Seven Killings) has spent his career examining Jamaica's historical fractures, but The Disappearers possesses a raw, unmediated fury. As a gay Jamaican writer, James brings profound personal stakes to this register. The result is a more intimate and less mythologized prose than in his previous work, with a gravity that is felt on every page. --Elizabeth DeNoma, executive editor, DeNoma Literary Services, Seattle, Wash.