In this impressive debut novel, Andrew Bynom captures both the mystery of nineteenth-century Istanbul and the magical qualities of a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. Weaving together the stories of an exiled female calligrapher and Andersen himself as he tours Ottoman Turkey, Bynom provides an artful and captivating meditation on aesthetics, politics, and faith. It’s hard to believe this is a first novel.
David Anthony, author of Something for Nothing
Andrew Bynom’s The Executioner’s Race is an inventive and beguiling mystery about the self transfigured by art. Every carefully wrought sentence speaks of our ongoing struggle to tell our own story while joining it with the stories of others. Bynom’s novel transports us, as the best novels do, to places we’ve never been, allowing us to see our own in a new light: Constantinople and its shimmering strait of Bosphorus, through the mysteries of Sufism, and into the gloriously serpentine heart of Zeynep, its calligrapher hero. A fine and startling debut.
Scott Blackwood, author of See How Small
Andrew Bynom’s debut novel expertly braids the epic love story of an exiled calligrapher with an audacious reimagining of Hans Christian Andersen’s travels in Istanbul. The late Ottoman setting is haunting and fantastic, and the prose flows with the vibrancy and elegance of calligraphy, delivering a steady stream of tangible delights for the reader. The Executioner’s Race celebrates the magic of writing and storytelling, but it is also a demonstration of that magic.
Eric Lundgren, author of The Facades
In this elegantly structured novel, Andrew Bynom weaves together two fascinating tales, that of a world-weary writer in search of a revivifying story and that of the preternaturally gifted calligrapher who will inspire him. In prose distinguished by a skillfully controlled fertility, Bynom examines the interdependency of nature’s most beautiful and elusive cultivars and the imagination. The Executioner’s Race is a magical and engrossing read from start to finish.
Kellie Wells, author of Fat Girl, Terrestrial
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