The Hangman’s Game

Cleverly interweaving two storylines – a bloody slave revolt in 1823 and a military coup in the late 1990s – The Hangman’s Game follows a pregnant writer’s experiences in Nigeria during the murderous era of a ‘military democracy’, under a tyrant known only as Butcher Boy. The subplot, the woman’s novel, is set in her native Guyana, with historical characters who reflect their counterparts in the real world – the woman, her minister husband and their daughter’s strikingly beautiful nursemaid. Insecurities about her marriage begin to spiral out of control and paranoia sets in as the protagonist becomes unable to distinguish between real-life threats and the constructions of her imagination. The hangman’s noose from the simple spelling guessing game and the children’s nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice are used to sinister effect in this studiously plotted and subtly told story.