Marlon James and the people who we can’t forget

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  Hello and welcome to Meet the Writers.

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  I'm Georgina Godwin.

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  My guest grew up in Kingston, Jamaica and nearly gave up writing altogether after his first novel was rejected 78 times.

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  He went on to become the first Jamaican writer to win the Booker Prize for A Brief History of Seven Killings

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  and followed it with the African fantasy novels Black Leopard, Red Wolf and Moon Witch, Spider King.

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  Now he's back in Jamaica with The Disappearers,

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  which has received rave reviews and has just been shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize.

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  The novel begins in Kingston in 1988, where eight gay men come together to rehearse John Herbert's Fortune

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  and Men's Eyes, a groundbreaking play about sex, identity and power inside a men's prison.

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  Their secret rehearsals give them a place to be themselves.

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  Then a homophobic mob attacks them.

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  One man is killed, others are badly injured, and two later disappear.

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  The novel follows what happens to the survivors over the years that follow through sex, revenge, AIDS, exile,

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  and the search for the men who vanished.

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  James, welcome to Meet the Writers.

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  Thanks for having me.

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  It's so great to have you here.

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  We've met in various places all around the world, and here you are back in my studio.

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  It's great.

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  So listen, who were you as a boy growing up in Kingston?

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