AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2026 BOOKER PRIZE

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION

“This masterpiece is the novel of the decade, if not the century . . . The Disappearers places [James] near the front of the line, a decade or two from now, for the Nobel Prize.” ―The New York Times

“Harrowing, hilarious, magnificent . . . this novel will be read decades from now, pored over in seminars and bookmarked on subway commutes. . . . [James’s] defiant queer epic belongs to us all.” ―The Boston Globe

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

From Marlon James, author of the Booker Prize–winning A Brief History of Seven Killings, a propulsive novel about the murder of a gay man in 1980s Jamaica and its tragic consequences.

On a day in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1988, eight men come together to begin rehearsals for a play. Though they are strangers to one another, they share an inescapable truth: They are gay in a country that wants nothing to do with them.

One night the men are savagely attacked and one of them is killed. As the survivors heal, each man finds that he must confront the bigotry and
homophobia that the attack laid bare. Some of the men try to ignore what the murder unearthed. Some embrace their rage. Others simply vanish into thin air. All of them are forever scarred by what happened.

In The Disappearers, Marlon James has written the powerful and unflinching story of the men who must grapple with the hatred, alienation, and shame they face in a world that refuses to accept them. By turns epic and intimate, violent and forgiving, this is above all a deeply human story of acceptance and insight as only Marlon James can tell it.