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Hangman

A Novel

Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
2 of 2 copies available

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.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 19, 2023
      Binyam’s beguiling and dreamlike debut chronicles an immigrant man’s return to his home country after 26 years. The unnamed narrator, a 50-something Black man, doesn’t know why he’s traveling, and the reader only knows someone has called him on the phone to say arrangements have been made for his trip. During the flight, an attendant inexplicably informs the narrator that the passenger next to him is dead. After he lands, a taxi takes him along roads that seem “random and resistant ” and he arrives at a bus depot with a vague sense that he’s meant to visit his dying brother. The route is circuitous, and it leads to an ending that’s twisty and illuminating. Along the way, the narrator has a series of random and mordantly funny encounters that highlight themes of colonialism and cultural differences (a foreign white woman who has adopted a Black farmer’s son claims she’s committed to “the work of mutual understanding,” and a local former clergyman says of a pile of donated clothing from abroad: “Although these people were ashamed of their old possessions, they were nevertheless attached to the idea of their possessions being used to their full extent”). This is one of those novels that demands a second reading, and is well worth the time. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Ron Butler sets a lively pace for this allegorical story of a man who is revisiting the unnamed African country of his childhood after a lifetime abroad. As the main character, also unnamed, sets out to find his brother, he encounters obstacles ranging from vengeful sharpshooters to corrupt bureaucrats, along with a series of storytellers. Through the main story and the storytellers, themes emerge of an individual who is searching for meaning and a nation that is experiencing numerous economic and political struggles. Butler's easy style draws the listener in, and the chapters flow by quickly. For fans of international fiction, this is an interesting story told in an entertaining manner. M.R. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

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  • English

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