The Disappearers

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 BOOKER PRIZE

“Among Marlon James’s most ambitious and history-making works… James is a singular literary talent.” –Booker Prize judge citation

From Marlon James, author of the Booker Prize–winning A Brief History of Seven Killings: the electrifying story of the murder of a gay man in 1980s Jamaica and its far-reaching consequences

In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica, begin rehearsals for a play. The men are strangers to one another and each has a different reason for being there. But they share one inescapable truth: All of them are gay―a “battyman” in Jamaican argot―and all of them must contend with the dangers that such a truth lays bare.

One night the men are savagely attacked and one of them is killed. For the survivors, their recovery is as much emotional as it is physical. As their bodies heal, the men are forced to face the hatred and rage that the attack laid bare. Some try to ignore what the attack has unearthed, while others double down on retribution.

In The Disappearers, Marlon James has written both a propulsive crime story and a riveting exploration of what gay men must do to survive in a society that wants no part of them. Full of spellbinding characters, lacerating humor, and unapologetic sex, this novel is as much a page-turner as it is a finely etched portrait of queer life in Jamaica.