"Hangman" by Maya Binyam delivers a neutral reading experience. The narrative explores societal issues with a mix of poetry and prose. While the work is thought-provoking, it may feel disjointed, hindering a seamless flow. Binyam's novel offers a unique perspective but might be better suited to readers comfortable with unconventional storytelling.

I don't know quite what to do with this one! The voice itself grated on me; I didn't enjoy the cadence or tone after the first couple of chapters--its charm wore off. That said, the ending is super strong, and it casts the book in a different light once you're finished. So I like it more in hindsight than I did as I read it. In that way, I'd say it's worth the read, even if the act of reading it is sometimes confusing/frustrating. If you can read it in one sitting, do that. I think it reads best as one gulp rather than allowing time for the reader to try to make sense of it piecemeal.

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on August 8, 2023

In its prose style and surrealistic plot, Hangman reminds me of José Saramago’s novels. Maya Binyam didn’t make my belly jiggle with laughter or my mind explode from an excess of awe, so she isn’t quite Saramago, but the comparison is nevertheless meant as a high compliment.

Saramago wrote some amazing riffs. Like Saramago, Binyam delights the reader with an abundance of startling observations. At a funeral, the narrator concludes that most people have felt greater sadness in their lives from less consequential causes than a friend’s death, but “the job of the funeral was to make everyone forget about that prior sadness and pretend that the death at hand was the most devastating event of their lives.”

And: “Her parents didn’t have any customs, so she learned values from people she saw on TV, who taught her to buy random objects, discard them, and buy some more. That was her life goal.”

And: “Elected officials were relevant to their lives only insofar as they made them feel cared for or alerted them to the fact that that care was being threatened by an outside force. People could be mobilized to rally against that outside force because it infringed upon the legacy of their elders, who they were certain had died so that their grandchildren, and their grandchildren’s grandchildren, might never be forced to contend with the past. Elected officials encouraged the people’s forgetfulness and told them that their lack of history was their greatest asset.”

Apart from being a vehicle for delivering riffs, what is the story about? At the age of 55, the unnamed narrator returns to his unnamed home country to visit his seriously ill brother. He is a citizen of the country where he has lived for the last 26 years, a place where he hoped he would never be killed, having initially been granted refugee status after fleeing his home country with forged documents following his release from prison. The country where he is now a citizen is also unnamed, but clues in the text (the president is black; a celebrity has just died who claimed to have a skin condition that affected his perceived race) make clear that the narrator was naturalized in the US and that he is telling his story in 2009.

The country of the narrator’s birth seems to be somewhere in Africa. The specific country is probably left unidentified because Hangman is meant to be a bigger story than the one the narrator tells. Faces sometimes lose their characteristics when the narrator examines them closely. One country might be similar to another country; one person might just as well be another person. Details are often fuzzy, perhaps as a reminder that details aren’t important to larger stories.

In the country of his current citizenship, the narrator recalls having a wife, although his attempts to send her emails always fail. In his birth country, he might have a son. He hasn’t had contact with his son in so long that he’s not sure whether he still has a son.

The country of the narrator’s birth is a place where a kitchen might have a dirt floor, where a bus depot is simply a roped off area, where churches have been taken over by the government and charge admission fees. Arriving at the airport, the narrator begins a dreamlike journey that forms the plot. He loses his cash to scammers. He acquires more cash so he can scammed by a cousin who has scammed all his relatives. The cousin sends him on a bus trip to a place where his brother might or might not live. The narrator loses his luggage. At the insistence of an aide worker, he trades the clothing on his back for an inferior shirt and pants that have been donated to a charity by Americans who feel good about sending their ugly and unwanted clothing to foreign countries.

None of these events seem to disturb the narrator. In fact, when he tries to make a deposit in a bank where he has no account, he simply hands his wallet and all its contents to a bank teller and leaves without any concern that he no longer has access to money. Eventually he parts with his passport, the last remaining proof of his existence. He takes it all in stride. The narrator feels he has little control over his actions: “My body continued to stay, so I chose to believe that I had decided to keep it there.” When he assesses the inside of his body, he discovers that the place where his heart is supposed to be is empty. At that point, he is a bit disturbed but feels powerless to heal himself.

Nothing much matters to the narrator because life is a series of choices and consequences and regardless of his particular choices and their consequences, “in the end, I would live or die, just like anyone else.” When he happens upon his son’s mother, he thinks they have become “just two people, two tourists, returned to a country that might have been any country in the world. That’s how insignificant our personal experience was, even if that personal experience had derailed the events of everyday life.”

Finding his family members is largely a matter of luck, coincidence, or destiny (the narrator isn’t sure whether he believes in any of those). He has repeat encounters with the same strangers, or perhaps they aren’t strangers at all. The narrator doesn’t always understand the language in which he is addressed, or he understands it for a while and then doesn’t, just as people abruptly change languages when they speak to him, perhaps to avoid answering his questions.

The narrator talks to a yoghurt vendor and a bank teller and a bus passenger who all share life stories of no great significance that he would rather not hear. The narrator eavesdrops on other conversations before deciding that they are not worthy of his attention. “People like to talk, because talking makes them feel like their experiences amounted to something, but usually the talking turned those experiences into lies.” He believes that people talk about their lives because they are trying to find an explanation for their existence, but their experiences are pretty much everyone’s experiences and aren’t worth discussing. He concludes that “even abhorrent people reminded us of ourselves and all the things we had gone through or assumed we one day would.”

The narrator doesn’t care about the stories or anything else. Asked if he wants tea, he tells us “I didn’t want it or not want it” but accepts a cup to be polite. Asked if he has decided to pursue salvation, he answers “that I hadn’t decided for it or against it.” Similar responses of indifference permeate the novel.

So the plot is not just a physical journey, but an observational journey that forces the narrator to consider his life in the context of all other lives. The narrator becomes less substantial, less likely to be noticed, as the story unfolds. His sense of being just another insignificant person in a world of insignificant people seems to be physically manifested, as his internal organs (not just his heart) feel like they have vanished, which might explain his feeling of constipation, although his skin remains intact. Perhaps he is fading away; perhaps he has taken the identity of another person. Given the novel’s surreal nature, the narrator’s fate is open to interpretation. Readers might find the narrator’s perspective to be depressing and maybe it is, but it’s also a reasonable if unsettling way to view life.

Putting aside the plot and its suggestion of life’s futility, the novel is worth reading for the narrator’s relentlessly amusing commentary. Apart from the passages quoted above, Hangman touches upon the history of human relations, the merits of different political and social structures, predestination versus coincidence, international charity, religion, suffering, American news broadcasts, and the difference between value and price, in addition to less serious topics like body odor and lousy food. This is a novel of big ideas and a small life. It might be too downbeat for some readers, but it scores points for making deep thoughts entertaining.

RECOMMENDED

Hangman was nothing like I expected. I had such a fun time reading this when I first started. It was witty, awkward, darkly comedic, and dry. I liked following around our unnamed narrator while he floated from place to place, unsure what was really going on. The middle kind of dragged ona little bit for me but the end was a nice payoff. Would highly recommend reading this and would love to read more from Maya Binyam in the future.

I was immediately pulled into this strange journey that begins with a male narrator who is returning to home country in Africa to attend to his dying brother. As we follow him being whisked along from each scene, he appears dazed as he doesn’t seem to remember family members (granted he’s been gone 26 years), or much about how to navigate the familiar yet foreign landscape or the final destination to meet his brother. Amid the wandering, he encounters strangers and incidents that allow him to ponder death, politics, identity, cultural traditions and beliefs.

However, I lost interest about half-way through the story. It was repetitive and seemingly tried too hard to be deceptive when at that point, I think most readers have realized what was happening and where the plot was going. The second half was tough for me to get through and I scanned passages to complete the story. I enjoyed the social commentary and critiques more than anything; those aspects highlighted shortcomings in Western thought and practices.

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the opportunity to review.

A smart book about a man on a journey with several pointed political critiques about incarceration, race, violence, etc. Sometimes off-putting but rigorous and logical. Very funny at times too.

Hangman is an absurd tale of a man returning home that doesn't feel much like home at all. Our main character makes his way home from US, to visit with his brother with nothing except his passport and a bag packed for him by someone else. We are swept along on this confusing and strange return back to his unnamed home country in Africa, and the winding trip to find his brother and perhaps himself as a free man. The dreamlike, withdrawn feel of the novel made me smile often, and I enjoyed the tenderness of that came out of it, handling big thoughts about religious power as a means of control, the American illusion of a impoverished monolithic Africa, the pain of families torn apart amidst political unrest, and the violent racism refugees experience. Binyam also maintains an eerie feeling of foreboding about our main character's brother, who emails often asking for money, food, medication, an apartment, all with a slightly guilting tone of familial duty. This story is about grief, centrally, in the loss of what once was, and the disorienting feeling of not recognizing where you are from both in place and in blood. A trippy read with very intriguing themes, though some parts are quite disorienting (likely intentionally so). I look forward to Binyam's next works.

This novel was not for me, but I can see that many people will enjoy it. I enjoyed the original writing style, how we are led through the rambling thoughts of the narrator and how people he encounters tell him details about their own lives and stories. However, I ultimately found it difficult to follow the plot and a distracting. I think fans of "What Napoleon Could Not Do" by DK Nnuro.

This small novel is about big things: oppressive systems of government and ideology, corporatism, nationalism, even crime and punishment as the unnamed narrator travels from (presumably the United States) to his homeland. Along the way he listens to conversations passively, trying to make sense of his predicament. It would be best to read this in one or two sessions to stay in the flow of the story and understand what it is trying to explain about modern life on a global stage.

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

An unnamed narrator, an unnamed country, Can he go home again after 26 years in America? Well he has but nothing seems right- he's disoriented, or is everyone else disoriented. I'll be honest- I wasn't sure what, if anything, was happening here but the language was lovely and I was certain there was a message, even if it wasn't clear to me. Had this been longer, I likely would have put it away but I didn't- and I'm glad. It's difficult to describe but worth your time. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary and experimental fiction.

The unnamed narrator goes on an odyssey from his "country where I had become a citizen" back to his "country of origin" meeting a variety of characters along the way. Neither the characters nor the countries are ever named.

In some way, each character, from his seatmate on the bus to the yogurt man to the graduate students debating at a cafe, is a philosopher eager to share their theories with him. He collects these philosophies as he meets and leaves each character. He also leaves some personal object or bit of clothing at every stop until he has nothing left.

He is swept along by circumstance. "So I stood where I stood, waiting for my life to happen." As the reader, I felt the same. I, too, was waiting for something to happen.
And then, at the end, it did. It was only then that I realized what was happening and I felt that I should go back and read the book again with my newfound understanding.
The book is written beautifully, and is certainly original in its concept and execution, however it did try my patience.

This is not my type of book. I did not get along well with the style of writing - dissociative, existential - or the generalized way of referring to characters - no names, just objective descriptions like “my son’s mother’s brother”. The story is told of a man who, after 26 years in an American prison, returns to sub-Saharan Africa to find his brother, who is dying. The man encounters many people along the way in his crazy “tragic farce” experiences. There is a “reveal” of sorts that comes at the end, but, as I was expecting one (based on others’ reviews), it wasn’t a surprise. I’m chalking this up to a poor fit between this book and me. Plenty of readers are enjoying the story immensely.

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an e-ARC of this title in exchange for my honest opinion.

Original, startling, captivating, hypnotic. The closest reading experience I can think of to this book is REMAINDER by Tom McCarthy--the same disorientation, the same need for me as a reader to pay absolute attention and to not allow my focus to waver or I'll drop the thread, the same wild leaps out-of-bounds of what I expected to read next. The same ... the word I'm coming up with is "existential dread" but the effect of this novel is both deeper and lighter than this phrase would suggest. I'm very glad to have read it, and I recommend it to everyone whose heart is thrilled when you pick up a book and read its first pages and you think 'oh, my, I've never read anything like this before.'

ARC REVIEW
4.5

So unique and captivating, an omniscient mundane prose. This story follows the narrator as he kind of floats through a series of circumstances.

Summoned back to his home country; this man (who is never named) tries to figure out what he is doing, who the people around him are and why they look so familiar. The sense of intrigue is what kept me as a reader going throughout this story, a short 140 pages which was perfect for this type of writing style. Any longer and I would of lost interest completely.

The ending was great, somewhat predictable but nevertheless the execution was done brilliantly. I was tossing up whether to give this 4 or 5 stars as it is a shorter book and I feel like with omniscient prose like this it'll be hit or miss for some people. But for me I really did enjoy.

A man returns to his homeland in a fever dream of dissociation, dislocation, and disaffection. He wanders about, circling ever closer to his home, encountering those who attempt to advise him but he generally listens carefully to them, then discards what they have to say as nonsense. He has lived most of his life in another land and is uncertain why he has been required to come home, but is willing to passively go along with just about anything.

That this book is well-written cannot be denied. Binyam takes on a very difficult task, the essentially plotless novel, with ease and skill. Many authors have written in this way; Borges, Garcia Marquez, and Nabokov come readily to mind. It's tricky, though, because the author must give us a reason to read something so thoroughly vague and, in the end, rather meaningless. Yes, this novel takes on major themes like death, family, dislocation, and cultural misunderstanding, but in the end there simply isn't enough meat on the bones of this skeleton of a story to make the journey worthwhile. Still worth a read, if only to bask in the overwhelming weirdness of the trip.

I've been wondering what the conceit is since page one, and when the final denouement came it wasn't much of a surprise. Actually, it wasn't all that important although it is used as a (retroactive) framing device to expound on politics and the state of the world. Where the novel's strength lies is the style - everything's askew, sometimes less sometime more, and reader's rarely sure on what ground she threads and where the narrative goes. The tone is also rather flat, which together with askewness makes for a not so much a cold reading as an otherworldly one.

Thank you to the publishers for an early e-copy.
This is a very strange book.. I really liked the strangeness of it at the beginning but by the end I felt confused and lost. By the end I felt like I was reading someone's dream, with no clear ending. Which is not what I expected to read when I requested this book. A reread in the future might change my mind about this book, who knows.

A man gets on a plane to his home country, heading to see his dying brother. He has not been home in twenty-six years, having fled to the US as a refugee. He feels he still knows his home country well, but his journey to his brother’s house is a meandering one, pulling little details out one at a time which reveal the truth of his story.

Binyam’s debut is excellent. Hangman is a story of details and moments which reveal more than you originally thought. The journey the man takes, as well as the people he interacts with, take on new significance with each new piece of his story that he shares. I loved the way this was written, and the tone was especially unique: flat and kind of empty, but really in service to the story.

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. In this strange tale, a man is summoned back to the African country of his birth, after escaping to America after a short prison sentence. Our unnamed narrator is constantly off balance as he doesn’t recognize anyone and is not entirely sure why he is there. He thinks the servants at the first house he comes to are his relatives, he has to give a distant relative money to build a house that is already built, he listens to people on the buses he takes cross country as they make speeches or ask him questions. He leaves his money in a bank that won’t let him deposit his money in his brother’s name and leaves his passport in the pharmacy that won’t sell him medicine for his high blood pressure. An ex priest makes him wear used clothes. He ex wife is now a servant. This almost dreamlike book flies along as we root for a narrator who seems very much in over his head.

What a strange, challenging gem of a novel. HANGMAN tells the story of an unnamed narrator who journeys to his homeland for reasons that are not initially quite clear. The tone is at times wry, the novel in itself a bit voice-y. The closest corollary I could think of is the Outline trilogy, as here too the narrative unfolds via confession after confession that strangers force onto the narrator. Though I thought about Katie Kitamura's most recent novels, too, as the story feels darker and more consequential than the Cusk trilogy.

I look forward to reading what Binyam writes next.

Thanks to the publisher for the e-galley!