Saturday, September 12 at 7:00 p.m. – Marlon James – The Disappearers
Twenty-seven seasons in, Talking Volumes — presented by MPR News and the Minnesota Star Tribune — remains one of the region’s most anticipated literary event series. This fall, five bestselling authors sit down with award-winning journalists Kerri Miller and Catharine Richert for deep conversations about their books, their lives, and the ideas shaping our world. And we’ll do it all in a welcoming new home: The O’Shaughnessy Auditorium at St. Catherine University.
Don’t miss an unforgettable evening with Marlon James, the Booker Prize–winning and New York Times bestselling author whose bold, electrifying fiction has captivated readers around the world. Opening the fall season of Talking Volumes, James joins us to discuss The Disappearers, a gripping and deeply moving new novel set in 1980s Jamaica. At once suspenseful, lyrical, and profoundly humane, the book follows eight gay men whose lives are forever altered by a brutal act of violence, revealing a story of survival, courage, and resilience. Known for masterworks including A Brief History of Seven Killings and Black Leopard, Red Wolf, James brings unmatched literary power to the stage for what promises to be a riveting conversation. Join us at The O’Shaughnessy Auditorium for the kickoff event of our new season.
About the Author
Marlon James is the Booker Prize–winning and New York Times bestselling author of A Brief History of Seven Killings; the bestselling and National Book Award finalist Black Leopard, Red Wolf; as well as the bestselling Moon Witch, Spider King; The Book of Night Women; and John Crow’s Devil. In addition to the Booker Prize, James’s novels have won the American Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and the Los Angeles Times Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, and have been finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the NAACP Image Award. In 2019, Time magazine named him one of the one hundred most influential people in the world. Born in Jamaica, James lives in New York City.
About the Book
From Marlon James, author of the Booker Prize–winning A Brief History of Seven Killings: a propulsive novel about the murder of a gay man in 1980s Jamaica and its tragic consequences. In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica, begin rehearsals for a play. 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 “battyman” in Jamaican argot―and all of them must contend with the dangers that such a truth lays bare.
One night a mob savagely attacks them, killing one of the men. For the survivors, their recovery is as 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 has 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 what 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.
Talking Volumes would like to thank our season sponsor Episcopal Homes.
