Marlon James on ‘The Disappearers’: A Rare, Tender‑Yet‑Dark Turn in His Writing

When you crack open Marlon James’s newest book, The Disappearers, the first thing you notice isn’t a glossy cover or a clever tagline—it’s a set of cramped, handwritten journal entries. They belong to Eddy Porteus, a middle‑class student in Kingston, Jamaica, in the sweltering summer of 1988. Eddy’s secret? He’s gay, and in his world that secret can cost him his family, his safety, even his life.

James, who snagged the Booker Prize for A Brief History of Seven Killings, says the opening feels like a love letter to his own Generation‑X youth, packed with the pop‑culture references he still laughs about in Brooklyn. “It’s very much a gay book, but it’s also a love letter to Gen X,” he tells me, his Brooklyn‑based voice warm and a little wry.

The story quickly spirals. Eddy is rehearsing for a daring play about prison life and gay sex. He’s smitten with fellow actor Matt Chin, while another castmate, Jordan Brown, lives on the edge of a car, doing sex work after being cast out by his family. Their director, the seasoned Havelock Titus, wants the production to force Kingston to confront truths it’s been hiding.

That first section reads like a sharp, funny coming‑of‑age tale. Then the mob discovers the play, and the narrative flips, becoming a jagged, chaotic chorus of voices that echo the violence that erupts in the streets. James deliberately shifts away from Eddy’s single‑voice journal to a tangled cacophony, underscoring that even a mob is made up of individual people—each with a selfish reason for joining the frenzy.

In the Zoom interview (which we trimmed for brevity), James admits he often has no idea where his stories will end up. “A good writing day for me is saying, ‘I didn’t see that coming,’” he says, laughing. He starts with a vague outline, lets research and lived experience pull the plot in new directions, and then throws snippets of his own life at his characters to see how they react. “I remember thinking, ‘If I’m caught buying Prince’s ‘LoveSexy,’ I’m going to be stoned to death,’ and I gave that to Eddy,” he recalls.

Jordan’s storyline is a raw, angry meditation on homophobia. James confesses he listened to homophobic hip‑hop well into his forties, wondering why he kept enjoying music that hated him. “I still have a lot of anger,” he admits, “and I wasn’t shy about letting it flow.” He argues that while perspective is valuable, sometimes you need to let the raw nerve bleed.

When asked about the mob’s chaotic chorus, James explains the choice was intentional. “It couldn’t be a one‑person narrative because I wanted to keep the chaos,” he says. “People think a mob is a single beast, but every participant made a choice to be there.” He trimmed the mob section dramatically—from twice its original length—because he didn’t want to linger on any one voice for too long.

Violence is a familiar element in James’s work, but here it takes a different shape. In Brief History, violence is a tool wielded by characters to assert dominance. In The Disappearers, the violence is inflicted on them. “It was important for me to focus on what happens when you’re on the receiving end,” James explains. The result is what he calls “the darkest book I’ve ever written,” yet also “my most tender.” He deliberately lets some characters survive—a rarity, he notes, in his own oeuvre where most protagonists rarely make it to the end.

Throughout the conversation, James peppers his answers with asides that feel like a friend chatting over coffee. He pauses, chuckles, and even jokes about the irony of his own past musical tastes. The interview, though edited, retains that off‑hand, conversational rhythm that makes it feel more like a dialogue than a press release.

So why does James call The Disappearers a rarity? Because it blends a humorous, personal coming‑of‑age voice with a brutal, communal trauma, and because it allows its victims a sliver of hope. It’s a book that lives in the tension between darkness and tenderness—something James admits he rarely allows himself to explore.

If you’re a fan of James’s earlier, more violent work, or if you’re simply looking for a novel that tackles LGBTQ life in Jamaica with unflinching honesty, this one might just surprise you. It’s messy, it’s funny, it’s angry, and, most of all, it’s profoundly human.