Hangman -- Maya Binyam, Hardcover

An enthralling and original first novel about exile, diaspora, and the impossibility of Black refuge in America and beyond.

In the morning, I received a phone call and was told to board a flight. The arrangements had been made on my behalf. I packed no clothes, because my clothes had been packed for me. A car arrived to pick me up.

A man returns home to sub-Saharan Africa after twenty-six years in America. When he arrives, he finds that he doesn't recognize the country or anyone in it. Thankfully, someone recognizes him, a man who calls him brother--setting him on a quest to find his real brother, who is dying.

In Hangman, Maya Binyam tells the story of that search, and of the phantoms, guides, tricksters, bureaucrats, debtors, taxi drivers, relatives, riddles, and strangers that will lead to the truth.

It is an uncommonly assured debut: an existential journey; a tragic farce; a slapstick tragedy; and a strange, and strangely honest, story of one man's stubborn quest to find refuge--in this world and in the world that lies beyond it.

Author: Maya Binyam
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 08/08/2023
Pages: 208
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.52h x 5.79w x 0.81d
ISBN: 9780374610074

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 03/01/2023 pg. 6
Publishers Weekly 06/19/2023
Kirkus Reviews 08/01/2023

About the Author
Maya Binyam is a fiction writer and critic whose work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, New York, Bookforum, Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. She is a contributing editor at The Paris Review and has previously worked as an editor at Triple Canopy and The New Inquiry. She lives in Los Angeles.