Winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize
Man Booker Prize Finalist 2011
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 cafe. He is never heard from again. He was twenty years old, a German citizen. And he was n/a 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. 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.
"Berlin, 1939. The Hot-Time Swingers, a popular German American jazz band, have been forbidden to play live because the Nazis have banned their ""degenerate"" music. After escaping to Paris, where they meet Louis Armstrong, the band's brilliant young trumpet player, Hieronymus Falk, is arrested in a cafe by the Gestapo. It is June 1940. He is never heard from again. He is twenty years old, a German citizen. And he is n/a 1992. Falk, now a jazz legend, is the subject of a celebratory documentary. Two of the original Hot-Time Swingers American band members, Sid Griffiths and Chip Jones, are invited to attend the film's premier in Berlin. As they return to the landscape of their past friendships, rivalries, loves, and betrayals, Sid - the only witness to Falk's disappearance who has always refused to speak about what happened - is forced to break his n/a re-creates the lost world of Berlin's prewar smoky bars, and the salons of Paris, telling his vibrant and suspenseful story in German American slang. Half-Blood Blues is a novel about music and race, love and loyalty, and marks the arrival of an extraordinarily ""gifted storyteller"" (Toronto Star)."
Recenzii
"Unforgettable...Brilliantly conceived, gorgeously executed. It's a work that promises to lead black literature in a whole new direction." --"The Globe and Mail "(Toronto)"A superbly atmospheric prologue kick-starts a thrilling story about truth and betrayal...[A] brilliantly fast-moving novel." --"The Times" (London)
"Shines with knowledge, emotional insight, and historical revisionism...Truly extraordinary in its evocation of time and place, its shimmering jazz vernacular, its pitch-perfect male banter and its period slang." --"The Independent" (London)
"Ingenious." --"The""Daily Telegraph "(London)
"Destined to win a wide audience...Deftly paced in incident and tone, moving from scenes of snappy dialogue, in which band members squabble and banter humorously, to tense, atmospheric passages of description...Edugyan makes fresh tracks in this richly-imagined story..."Half-Blood Blues "itself represent a kind of flowering--that of a gifted storyteller." --"The Toronto Star"
