Half-Blood Blues
Winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize
Man Booker Prize Finalist 2011An Oprah Magazine Best Book of the Year Shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction Berlin, 1939. The Hot Time Swingers, a popular jazz band, has been forbidden to play by the Nazis. Their young trumpet-player Hieronymus Falk, declared a musical genius by none other than Louis Armstrong, is arrested in a Paris café. He is never heard from again. He was twenty years old, a German citizen. And he was black. Berlin, 1952. Falk is a jazz legend. Hot Time Swingers band members Sid Griffiths and Chip Jones, both African Americans from Baltimore, have appeared in a documentary about Falk. When they are invited to attend the film's premier, Sid's role in Falk's fate will be questioned and the two old musicians set off on a surprising and strange journey. From the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin to the salons of Paris, Sid leads the reader through a fascinating, little-known world as he describes the friendships, love affairs and treacheries that led to Falk's incarceration in Sachsenhausen. Esi Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues is a story about music and race, love and loyalty, and the sacrifices we ask of ourselves, and demand of others, in the name of art.
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Community Reviews
Haunting story about redemption set in the world of jazz. Hiero is a brilliant musician and just a kid. One of the musicians around him, Sid, is our narrator. Sid had warring feeling’s about the kid, feeling protective and a tiny bit jealous. This inner turmoil set the scene for a harrowing WWII experience in Paris and Berlin and haunted him too his current days. Told in alternating time periods, 1939 and 1992, it’s a fascinating glimpse into the performance life and the horrors of war.
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