Marlon James, born and raised in Jamaica, and long-time resident of the US, is probably best known for his 2015 Booker Prize-winning novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings.
Described by the Booker judges that year as “startling in its range of voices and registers”, it spins a bloody tornado of violence and intrigue around the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in 1976. Spanning decades and continents, and recruiting the voices of more than 70 characters, it cemented James’s reputation as a writer of extraordinary talent and ambition.
Big literary prizes sometimes have the unintended consequence of keeping writers from their work, but James has been productive: he published Black Leopard, Red Wolf in 2019, and its follow-up, Moon Witch, Spider King in 2022; his TV crime series, Get Millie Black, aired last year. Now he’s back with his sixth novel, The Disappearers, longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize.
We’re in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1988, where eight gay men arrive at a dilapidated mansion house, answering a casting call for a local production of Fortune and Men’s Eyes, by John Herbert. Some of them have come because they have nowhere else to go; others are more intentional about wanting to “stage a battyboy revolution” by staging “a gay play”.
Either way, they’ve taken an enormous risk just by showing up, because to be gay in Jamaica is to live with an ever-present threat of violence. Over the course of the next month, as they rehearse, friendships blossom and their confidence grows, but their happiness is not to last. A mob descends, armed with crowbars and cricket bats; by the time the attack is over, one of the men is dead, another is blinded, and the rest are deeply traumatised. The bulk of the novel deals with the fallout from this horrific event, tracing threads of consequence across the following 20 or so years.
Marlon James: It’s bullsh*t to say there is ‘high’ and ‘low’ literature
If you’re new to James’s work, be ready for a challenging read, but one that will be well worth your time. His style is expansive and freewheeling, a mash-up of forms, perspectives and genres. The novel’s opening section, titled The Play, is told via a series of diary entries by one of the eight men, 18-year-old Eddy Porteous.
Recently out of high school, he proudly keeps a tally of the number of men he has slept with, tries to get his hands on gay porn magazines and worries that he’s getting too old for his X-Men comics. Eddy misses rehearsals on the night of the attack, and he only realises that something terrible has happened when he sees the yellow crime-scene tape and police cars outside the mansion house.
In the next section, The Blackjacks, the perspective changes abruptly. Now, we’re with the attackers, all 12 of them, identified by abbreviated names like Corporal T, Jah Q, and Dat Nigga J. We get snippets of live-action reporting / stream of consciousness: “High time now we cap some batty bitchez.” “Rounding them up like cows, yo.” And, perhaps most poignantly, “Kill it in them, kill it in me.” The episode is played out from intention to bloody climax in violent, graphic detail, the narrative bouncing between the attackers like players moving a ball towards a hoop.
The continuous shifts in form and perspective are both dizzying and exhilarating – later sections arrive as partial interview transcripts and letters – but the original eight men in the play remain at the heart of the story. Two of the men go missing, and others try to track them down: along the way, one begins plotting revenge on the attackers, “turning himself into battyboy Robin Hood”.
James calls the novel his most autobiographical to date, and his great accomplishment here is his generous and honest portrayal of men, both queer and straight: their anger, fear, isolation, confusion and longing; their moments of tenderness, camaraderie and melodrama; the journey to self-acceptance; the delight in discovering new forms of sexual pleasure.
Yes, it feels like the world is against you, James seems to say, but you have more power than you realise, and life – beautiful life – is full to overflowing with possibility.
Claire Adam’s latest novel, Love Forms, was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025