The Hangman’s Game

Karen King-Aribisala is an exceptional talent. She won the Commonwealth Prize (African Region) for the Best First Book in 1990 for Our Wife and Other Stories, and the 2008 Commonwealth Prize (Africa region) for the Best Book for The Hangman’s Game an affecting novel, which observes parallels in the slavery imposed by General Sani Abacha’s military regime in the 1980s and the conditions that led to the Demarara slave revolt in 1823. When a young Guyanese woman sets out to write a historical novel based on the Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823, she is beset by questions about her own African roots. To free her writer's block, she travels to Nigeria to experience her origins first-hand, and she soon finds herself brutally plunged into a world where the distinctions between her life and her fiction are blurred. Rich in tension, dark humor, and striking characters, this densely layered work offers an unparalleled look into the complex history of past and present Guyana, as well as the nature of postcolonial power in both Africa and the Caribbean. “In the book, Nigerians are as enslaved as are the blacks in Demarara. There is a connection between the hanging of the narrator’s friend (a Ken Saro-Wiwa-like figure) by Sani Abacha and the hanging of the missionary, John Smith, who went to Demarara. “Also, Jesus was hung on the cross.” said King. - Maureen Isaacson