The Book Archive is based in Edmonton, AB which is located within Treaty 6 Territory and within the Métis homelands and Métis Nation of Alberta Region 4. We acknowledge this land as the traditional territories of many First Nations such as the Nehiyaw (Cree), Denesuliné (Dene), Nakota Sioux (Stoney), Anishinaabe (Saulteaux) and Niitsitapi (Blackfoot).
In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica, begin rehearsals for a play, a modern masterpiece titled Fortune and Men's Eyes by Canadian playwright John Herbert. The men are strangers to one another and each has a different reason for being involved. But they all share one inescapable truth: All of them are gay—a "batty man" in Jamaican argot—and all of them must contend with the dangers that such a truth lays bare.
One night when the men are together a mob savagely attacks them, killing one of the men. For the survivors, their recovery is as much emotional as it is physical: As their bodies heal, each man grapples with the violence, the hatred, and the rage that the attack made plain. Some try to ignore what the attack unearthed, while others double down on retribution.
In The Disappearers, Marlon James has written a riveting and deeply human story of men forced to make compromises to survive that the society they live in demands. It is both a dramatic page-turner and an unflinching exploration of queer life in Jamaica during the 1980s and 1990s.