00:00What's going on, what's going on Zionist Nation? So we're going to look at the Booker Prize, yeah.
00:04We're looking at the, we're looking at the
00:10The Disappears.
00:13The Disappears is a 2026 novel by Jamaican writer Marlon James, published in the UK by Hamish Hamilton and in
00:20the United States by Riverhead Books.
00:22It is his sixth novel overall, and the first since 2015's A Brief History of Seven Killings to be set
00:28in Jamaica.
00:28It focuses on a group of gay men in Jamaica in the 1980s and is on the shortlist for the
00:332026 Booker Prize.
00:36Marlon James won the 2015 Booker Prize for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings about life in Jamaica
00:43in the 1970s.
00:44The Disappears is his first novel set in Jamaica since then.
00:47Focused on a group of gay men, it contains frequent references to the 1980s popular culture and gay icons such
00:54as Oscar Wilde and Edmund White.
00:55The Atlantic describes it as a gay novel about the uses of a gay novel.
01:00The Disappears was inspired by an unconfirmed attack on a group of gay men in the author's youth.
01:06The alleged victims never came forward.
01:08James has said,
01:12Having grown up and closeted Jamaica before moving to the United States, he aimed to portray the LGBTQ culture that
01:19he had not experienced.
01:20He interviewed individuals from a variety of backgrounds, conducted part of his research at the Schoenberg Center for Research in
01:26Black Culture in New York,
01:28and visited London to reconstruct that city's underground gay scene for a flashback set in the 1940s.
01:33The finished novel is told in five parts, each from a different perspective.
01:38Jean Gennett, a pioneering gay French author, influenced James' choice to have his characters produce the play Fortune and Men's
01:45Eyes.
01:46The play asks difficult questions about homophobia, and The Disappears focuses on the aftermath of gay bashing.
01:52Although there is a lesbian character, James chose to focus on gay men.
01:57He felt that Jamaican women such as Michelle Cliff, Patricia Dunker, and Stacey Ann Chin had represented their communities better
02:04than their male counterparts.
02:05The woman got it going on.
02:07In some ways, this was me trying to catch up, because our queer female literature is on point, and it's
02:12been going on since the 70s.
02:14The characters have a variety of motivations and forms of sexual expression, but all are closeted.
02:19The idea for the novel came to James while he was promoting Moon Witch, Spider King, the second book in
02:24a planned fantasy trilogy, in 2022.
02:27He sent his initial draft to Jake Morrissey, the editor at Riverhead Books, in June 2025.
02:33The editing process concluded in July 2026.
02:36Okay.
02:36The plot set right.
02:37Okay, we already heard about that.
02:42In his review, New York Times book critic Dwight Garner called it the novel of the decade, if not the
02:47century thus far.
02:48He also called it one of the signal reading experiences of my adult life, and predicted that James would be
02:53nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in the coming decades.
02:56Alright.
02:57So that sounds like a really good book to read, to immerse yourself in a different kind of culture, in
03:01a different country.
03:02Jamaica.
03:03Yeah.
03:04I've always wanted to learn more about Jamaica, so...
03:06So I would like to...
03:08I would like to read that.
03:09Yeah.
03:09If I have time, I would like to read that.
03:11And it would give me interesting things to say about the world.
03:13Yeah.
03:13I...
03:14That's the book I would like to read.
03:15And we were looking at the other...
03:17In the last video, which I didn't have the audio on, we were looking at the other books shortlisted for
03:24the Booker Prize.
03:282026.
03:30They...
03:32We were looking at John of John.
03:39Sorry.
03:39John of John, by Douglas Stewart.
03:41An evocative and intimate novel about a young gay man's fraught return home to the fictional island of Fallabay, written
03:47by a previous Booker winner.
03:49Okay.
03:49Douglas Stewart.
03:50The Things We Never Say, by Elizabeth Strout.
03:53A poignant exploration of friendship, loneliness, and life's hidden churns, centered on American history teacher Artie Dam, by a three
04:00-time nominee.
04:02The End of Everything, by John M. Harrison.
04:04An inventive and grim thirteenth novel, following a scavenger who discovers an alien washed up on a beach.
04:10Black Bag, by Luke Kennard.
04:13A satirical and humorous novel revolving around a psychological experiment where an out-of-work actor is paid to silently
04:19attend university lectures wearing a leather suit bag.
04:23May We Feed the King, by Rebecca Perry.
04:25A playful and intricate debut novel selected as part of the final six.
04:30One, two, three, four, five, six.
04:33Yeah.
04:34So, I was saying, I would like to read The Disappearers first because that had really good reviews and I
04:38think that would be the most immersive experience in a different kind of world from what I grew up in
04:44and what I'm in right now.
04:46Then I would like to read, for fun, I would really like to read, I would really like to read
04:53Where'd It Go?
04:57Where'd It Go?
05:01Oh, The End of Everything.
05:02An inventive and grim thirteenth novel, following a scavenger who discovers an alien washed up on a beach.
05:08That would be a fun one.
05:10Then, yeah, I'm not going to list, I would like to read all of them, right?
05:13I would like to read all of them.
05:15I think that was everything I said in the last video.
05:17No, stop, Josh.
