National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 HonoreeLonglisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction the
PEN Jean Stein Book Award and the PEN Hemingway Award for Debut NovelNamed a Best Book of the
Year by The New Yorker Vulture and BBCAn 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 and riddles that will lead
to the truth.This 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.
