Half-Blood Blues

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 listener through a fascinating, little-known world as he describes th