Marlon James on the Unusual Heart of “The Disappearers”

When you crack open The Disappearers, the first thing you meet is Eddy Porteus, a middle‑class student in Kingston, 1988, scribbling in a notebook. Eddy’s secret is simple yet dangerous – he’s gay. In a city where a revelation could mean disownment, a beating, or worse, his diary becomes a lifeline.

James lets Eddy’s voice linger just long enough to pull us into a rehearsal room where a play about prison life and queer desire is taking shape. Eddy is smitten with fellow actor Matt Chin, while the volatile Jordan Brown, a runaway turned sex‑worker, throws knives of rage into every scene. Their director, the seasoned Havelock Titus, pushes the troupe to expose the harsh truths Kingston refuses to see.

“It feels like a love letter to Gen X,” James says, chuckling. “It’s very much a gay book, but it’s also about the music we grew up with, the movies we watched, the politics that shaped us.” The opening reads like a sharp, funny coming‑of‑age story, packed with the pop‑culture riffs that have always peppered his prose.

Then the narrative cracks open. A mob catches wind of the play, and violence erupts. The second half of the novel becomes a chorus of fragmented voices – victims, witnesses, and perpetrators – each trying to make sense of the chaos. James deliberately avoids a single‑person perspective here; he wants readers to feel the crowd’s fury while remembering that every participant chose to be there.

In the Zoom interview, the Booker‑prize‑winning author admits he often writes without a map. “A good writing day is when I say, ‘I didn’t see that coming,’” he laughs. He pulls bits of his own life into the story – even the absurd image of being caught buying Prince’s “LoveSexy” and fearing a death sentence – then hands those moments to his characters to see how they react.

Jordan’s fury over homophobia is raw and familiar to James. He confesses he listened to homophobic hip‑hop into his forties, wondering why he loved the beats that hated him. “The anger is still there,” he says, “and I’m not shy about letting it bleed onto the page.” Yet he also warns that anger can be a double‑edged sword, offering short‑lived strength at a steep cost.

Violence, a recurring theme in James’s work, takes a different shape here. In A Brief History of Seven Killings, violence was a tool wielded by the characters. In The Disappearers, the characters are mostly on the receiving end. “If you make the suffering look acceptable, you’re selling the victims short,” he explains. The result is what he calls his darkest yet most tender novel – a book where survival feels possible, something he rarely grants his protagonists.

James also notes that the mob section was originally twice as long. He trimmed it, fearing that lingering too long would mute the individual stories he wanted to hear. “Everyone in that room had selfish reasons for being there,” he says, “and every turning point gives them a chance to walk away.”

In the end, the novel stands out in his catalogue because it balances brutality with compassion, chaos with intimate confession. As James puts it, “It’s a rarity for a Marlon James novel that the characters actually make it to the end.”