The Disappearers - Marlon James

This is what AIDS is after all, isn't it? One long set of disappearing acts. First is watching the friends and family disappear. Second act is when people try to disappear you. Third act is watching your body vanish from itself and wondering where the fuck you going, piece by piece, until all of you gone. I swear to God, at one point I used to think people with AIDS just evaporate. If there is a fourth act, it's when everybody erased you name as if you were never born in the first place. I received an advanced reading copy of The Disappearers from the team at Hamish Hamilton and Penguin UK, which I'm very grateful for. This is the last book on this year's Booker Prize longlist that I've read, and I don't really know where to start when it comes to reviewing jt. There's so much going on in The Disappearers that trying to summarise it feels like a fool's errand. It's a book about queerness. It's a book about Blackness. It's a book about the long shadow British and American colonialism…