We're thrilled to welcome Booker prize-winning author Marlon James to The Ritzy to celebrate the release of his new novel, The Disappearers: a triumphant return to the Jamaica of A Brief History of Seven Killings – a place of heat and chaos, and of danger for anyone outside the heteronormal.
James will appear live in conversation on the night and will be signing copies of The Disappearers after the screening.
Presented as part of Picturehouse's Book Club: bringing your bookshelf to the big screens. Join us for curated screenings and events, conversations with literary minds, and more.
Marlon James is the author of the New York Times bestselling Moon Witch, Spider King; the Sunday Times bestselling, National Book Award-finalist Black Leopard, Red Wolf; the Booker Prize-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings; The Book of Night Women and John Crow's Devil. In addition to the Booker Prize, his novels have won the American Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Born in Jamaica, Marlon James now lives in New York City.
ABOUT THE DISAPPEARERS
When eight gay men meet for the first time, in Kingston in 1988, answering the casting call for an openly queer play, they are already taking a big risk. But that is nothing compared to what rains down on them when a mob descends on one of their rehearsals. By the end of this night, one man is dead, all are injured, and two subsequently disappear.
As the survivors heal, each man finds he must confront the bigotry and homophobia that the attack laid bare. Some try to forget; some embrace their rage; and some simply vanish – but all are forever scarred. As one of the victims puts it, ‘there’s a difference between when something ends and when something stops’. And this story won’t stop until both the disappearers and the perpetrators have been tracked, along trails both hot and cold, and an ending reached.
Epic and intimate, violent and forgiving, The Disappearers is a tour de force which only Marlon James could have written – both an unflinching portrait of the hatred and shame faced by gay men in a society which refuses to accept them, and a deeply human story of acceptance and insight.
