There’s a lot we don’t know for much of American author Maya Binyam’s debut, Hangman. In this tragicomic story about an unnamed narrator’s journey home to an unnamed nation, which begins with a phone call telling him to board a plane, uncertainty and surreality are the norm.
We know that his ticket has been bought and placed in the breast pocket of his jacket, that a car arrives to pick him up and take him to the airport. The radio is on, “announcing traffic due to an accident involving a taxicab driver, a police officer, and a woman”. He finds that in fact the roads are fine, but this item of breaking news will follow him on his travels.
