A pin-sharp, tragicomedy about homecoming and loss, peopled by unforgettable characters, Binyam's defy odyssey through sub-Saharan Africa is a masterful disquisition on Black exile and refuge.
Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024
A man returns home to sub-Saharan Africa after twenty-six years living in exile in America. When he arrives, he finds that he doesn't recognize the country, or anyone in it. Thankfully, someone at the airport knows him - a man who calls him brother. As they travel to this man's house, the purpose of his visit comes into focus: he is here to find his real brother, who is dying.
Hangman is his tragicomic journey through homecoming and loss. It is a hilarious and twisted odyssey, peopled by phantoms and tricksters, aid workers and taxi drivers, the relatives and riddles that lead this man along a circuitous path towards the truth. This is the strangley honest story of one man's search for refuge - in this world and the one that lies beyond it.
An existential journey, a tragic farce, a slapstick tragedy: Hangman is the shockingly original debut novel about exile, diaspora and the search for Black refuge, from a thrilling new literary voice
Publisher: Pushkin Press
ISBN: 9781911590774
Number of pages: 208
Dimensions: 216 x 135 mm
A brilliantly surreal story of exile and homecoming... With its unreliable narrator and its social commentary on the supposed binaries between two countries, the novel is at its best when exploring the ethics and mechanics of empathy - Sana Goyal, the Guardian's Book of the Day
Strange and darkly funny... Maya Binyam's controlled blend of surreal whimsy and unsettling existential dread makes this a remarkably assured and distinctive debut - Houman Barekat, Times Literary Supplement
What if a road-trip across Africa were directed by David Lynch? In Maya Binyam's smartly-written debut novel, a man embarks on a strange, riddling and wryly entertaining voyage. On one level, Hangman unfolds as a mystery... on another level, it's an intelligent comedy... a thrill' - Cal Reverley-Calder, The Telegraph
Hangman is a subtle and peculiar novel about subtle and peculiar things - home, exile, injustice, family, return, and life itself. Binyam has written a remarkable book - one that builds, beautifully, a world that feels true, while dismantling the world that feels real - Keith Ridgway, author of A Shock
Hangman is a gripping story of homecoming and loss, of recuperation and letting go, all of it told in a voice that is at turns ruthlessly honest and startlingly beautiful. Maya Binyam is an immensely gifted writer and every page of this deeply moving novel offers us compelling and hard-earned truths. But what remains by the end is something that resembles a loving gesture from a long-lost relative: necessary and seismic, profound and unforgettable - Maaza Mengiste, author of the Booker Prize-shortlisted The Shadow King
A committed, inventive and often comedic exercise in abstraction that by its disquieting final pages has moved beyond themes of exile and return to depict something more tragic: a man who has finally come to know what he doesn't want to know - The Irish Times
A slim, stark, and captivatingly enigmatic début novel - New Yorker
A bravura twist on the immigrant novel' - Claire Allfree, Daily Mail
A compelling tale of homecoming, exile and grief - iPaper
Elegant, revealing, stage by stage, the harrowing backstory to its protagonist's eerie - and drily comic - journey across sub-Saharan Africa - Telegraph, books of the year
A strikingly masterful debut. With a slow, sure hand, Hangman beckons you into a zone that at first seems as clear, as blank, and as eerily sunny as the pane of a window. Then it traps you there, until you notice the blots, bubbles, and fissures in the glass-and then the frame itself, then the shatter. A clean, sharp, piercing-and deeply political-novel - Namwali Serpell, author of The Furrows
Daring, intellectually rich, and unsettlingly hilarious, Hangman is the rare book agile enough to balance the surreality and painfully rigid actuality of life. We have a powerful new voice in Maya Binyam, one who knows how to make a story sing. - Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun
Maya Binyam exquisitely captures unseen forces: the edges of consciousness, abstract political forces, and how they act on one another. Hangman is immersive and astonishing - Tavi Gevinson
One of those rare things in contemporary literature-a novel of ideas, in which the exploration of ethical and political questions animates and shapes the story itself - The Nation
Binyam's final reveal is melancholic but weirdly hopeful - Suzi Feay, Financial Times, Best New Debut Fiction
A laconic and darkly humorous narrative of exile whose narrator brings to mind Kafka's Josef K - FRIEZE'S Books of the Year 2023
Memorable... Binyam's veers into the absurd and surreal, with the narrative taking on a dreamlike quality. The novel's strongest moments lie in its interactions between characters, revealing thoughtful observations about exile, cultural identity and the nature of diaspora - Reader's Digest, 10 Best Books of 2023
Most immigrant novels of recent vintage share a single plot: a bright and hopeful person from the global south travels to a rich country in the global north and discovers that reality does not resemble their dreams. Maya Binyam's Hangman immediately upends expectations by moving in the opposite direction - away from the adopted country and back toward the abandoned one... A bold, courageous, and resonant book - Vulture, The Best Books of 2023
Urgent and emotionally resonant - Vogue
In this exceptional debut novel, an unnamed immigrant to America makes a disorienting journey back to his unnamed birthplace, a city "in crisis," where he is propelled deeper and deeper into a web of surreal recognition and misrecognition - New York Times
A series of confrontations with the vestiges of the life that he left behind, and an exploration of what is and isn't expected of migrants and their stories - BBC, 33 of the best books of 2023
Reinvents the novel of return and does so with a mordant wit and a sense of playfulness, that keeps you hooked right until the very end - Monica Ali
Wow! And I mean- wow!
Hangman tells the story of an African man who returns to his home country from America after being away for a couple of decades. Stuck in this unfamiliar yet familiar land he comes across many...
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This had not been on my radar before it was longlisted for the women's prize for fiction...
So my verdict - well written, really interesting and darkly funny read.
Very much enjoyed the read.
Not read anything...
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A beautifully bizarre contemplation on communication, connection and the narratives that make up our lives. With a heart-wrenching dive into immigration, racism and the blurred lines between right and wrong this is a... More
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