Review | Booker-shortlisted ‘The Disappearers’ by Marlon James is a literary outpouring of ancestral rage

Marlon James, in his Acknowledgements at the end of his Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, The Disappearers, writes that “The novel is total fiction. The novel actually happened.” It is this navigation with what consists of fiction, truth and justice in a world marked by colonial histories of brutal oppression, presenthate crimes against women and members of the LGBTQIA+ community, along with the myriad forms of normalised systemic racial, sex-based, class and/ or caste-based discriminations that the narrative broadly entails.

However, more specifically, James in his Acknowledgementsis referring to the atrocity at the heart of his epic narrative. The novel opens with eight queer, mostly amateur, actors who have gathered together to stage a play in 1988 Kingston, Jamaica.

A fairly innocent undertaking except that this is exactly what it is not in the eyes of a highly homophobic society, especially because of the choice of the play itself. They are hoping to stage Fortune and Men’s Eyes, the 1967 play that was set in a prison and raised pertinent questions about sexuality and violence.