Winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize
Man Booker Prize Finalist 2011
An 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.
