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 -- Sana Goyal - 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 -- Houman Barekat - 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' -- Cal Reverley-Calder - The Telegraph

Hangman is a subtle and peculiar novel about subtle and peculiar things - home, exile, injustice, family, return, and life itself. Binyam has written a remarkable book - one that builds, beautifully, a world that feels true, while dismantling the world that feels real -- Keith Ridgway, author of A Shock

Hangman is a gripping story of homecoming and loss, of recuperation and letting go, all of it told in a voice that is at turns ruthlessly honest and startlingly beautiful. Maya Binyam is an immensely gifted writer and every page of this deeply moving novel offers us compelling and hard-earned truths. But what remains by the end is something that resembles a loving gesture from a long-lost relative: necessary and seismic, profound and unforgettable -- Maaza Mengiste, author of the Booker Prize-shortlisted The Shadow King

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 bravura twist on the immigrant novel' -- Claire Allfree - Daily Mail

A compelling tale of homecoming, exile and grief' - iPaper

A strikingly masterful debut. With a slow, sure hand, Hangman beckons you into a zone that at first seems as clear, as blank, and as eerily sunny as the pane of a window. Then it traps you there, until you notice the blots, bubbles, and fissures in the glass-and then the frame itself, then the shatter. A clean, sharp, piercing-and deeply political-novel -- Namwali Serpell, author of The Furrows

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

Maya Binyam exquisitely captures unseen forces: the edges of consciousness, abstract political forces, and how they act on one another. Hangman is immersive and astonishing -- Tavi Gevinson

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

Maya Binyam's work has appeared in the Paris Review, the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, New York, Bookforum, Columbia Journalism Review, the New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. She is a contributing editor at the Paris Review and has previously worked as an editor at Triple Canopy and the New Inquiry, and as a lecturer in the New School's Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism program. Hangman is her debut novel.