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Hangman, August 2024
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Hangman, August 2023
Hardcover / e-Book
A Novel
Picador
August 2024
On Sale: August 6, 2024
Featuring: Maya Binyam
208 pages
ISBN: 1250338158
EAN: 9781250338150
Kindle: B0BBC8RXZY
Trade Paperback / e-Book
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Hardcover (August 2023)
Science Fiction | Dystopian
National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree
Long-listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Vulture, and BBC
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, 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.
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