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Picador
March 2012
On Sale: February 28, 2012
336 pages
ISBN: 1250012708
EAN: 9781250012708
Kindle: B006JJTB0G
Paperback / e-Book
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Fiction
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
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. 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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