'A gripping tale of homecoming and loss... ruthlessly honest and startlingly beautiful... profound and unforgettable' Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King 'Daring, intellectually rich, and unsettlingly hilarious. 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 'A subtle and peculiar novel about subtle and peculiar things - home, exile, injustice, family, return and life itself... a remarkable book' Keith Ridgway, author of A Shock 'A strikingly masterful debut... a clean, sharp, piercing - and deeply political novel' Namwali Serpell, author of The Furrows __________ 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

"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" - 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" - 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'" - The Telegraph

"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'" - 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

"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

"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" - 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