Review by Booklist Review
Binyam's masterful debut sends readers into the surreal, dreamlike perspective of an unnamed narrator who, following a short stint in prison, returns to his hometown in Africa. But after spending the last 26 years in the U.S., he has no one to reach out to and barely enough money to survive. Not knowing why he's been sent to Africa, or who sent him in the first place, all he can do is trust a strange cousin who meets him at the airport. As he stumbles through his new reality, struggling to adjust to the unfamiliar cultural dynamic, he decides to look for his brother and encounters priests, strangers, taxi drivers, and vaguely familiar relatives who either tell him what to do or try to manipulate or figure him out. In this spellbinding debut, Binyam's prose feels detached, mirroring the narrator's confusion and disassociation. She explores all the ways in which cultural differences, politics, and abstract consciousness intertwine in this strange yet enchanting story.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Binyam's beguiling and dreamlike debut chronicles an immigrant man's return to his home country after 26 years. The unnamed narrator, a 50-something Black man, doesn't know why he's traveling, and the reader only knows someone has called him on the phone to say arrangements have been made for his trip. During the flight, an attendant inexplicably informs the narrator that the passenger next to him is dead. After he lands, a taxi takes him along roads that seem "random and resistant " and he arrives at a bus depot with a vague sense that he's meant to visit his dying brother. The route is circuitous, and it leads to an ending that's twisty and illuminating. Along the way, the narrator has a series of random and mordantly funny encounters that highlight themes of colonialism and cultural differences (a foreign white woman who has adopted a Black farmer's son claims she's committed to "the work of mutual understanding," and a local former clergyman says of a pile of donated clothing from abroad: "Although these people were ashamed of their old possessions, they were nevertheless attached to the idea of their possessions being used to their full extent"). This is one of those novels that demands a second reading, and is well worth the time. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency. (Aug.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A fantastical journey reveals a wounded heart. Making an assured debut, Binyam spins a haunting, often surreal tale that begins one morning when the narrator, a 55-year-old Black man, receives a telephone call telling him to board a flight. His suitcase has been packed; his jacket pocket holds a ticket to the African country from which he fled to the U.S. 26 years before and where he had been a political prisoner. Even before he lands, the trip seems ominous: His seatmate suddenly dies, and he winds up sitting beside a corpse for the entire flight. Not knowing why he is returning to his homeland, he surmises it is to see his brother, who has claimed to be ill for years and who may, or may not, be dying. Manipulative, selfish, and needy, the brother has repeatedly begged for money, property, or a visa. Nevertheless, with the goal of finding him, the narrator embarks on a convoluted, disorienting trek, encountering bizarre characters and assorted long-lost relatives. He witnesses the effects of poverty and greed, exploitation and insidious corruption: A railroad project abandoned by investors, for example, left viaducts that "cast the city in shadow, enticing its inhabitants to ascend staircases that led to nowhere." He notes that traditional cultural practices have been abandoned, undermined by consumerism, TV, and the internet, "which forced people to forget their interests, habits, and historical way of life." Hypocrisy is rampant: A man distributes mounds of dirty clothing donated by people in rich countries to assuage their consciences. A foreign aid worker, with no expertise to improve the plight of farmers, professes that her aim is "to promote mutual understanding," a phrase that the narrator finds incomprehensible. Reluctantly listening to uninvited confessions by random strangers, he finds himself reflecting on politics, loss, exile, the vicissitudes of human nature, and, ultimately, the meaning, or meaninglessness, of his own life. A savvy, wildly imaginative narrative. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
