Half-Blood Blues: A Novel

Half-Blood Blues: A NovelWinner of the Scotiabank Giller PrizeMan Booker Prize Finalist 2011An Oprah Magazine Best Book of the YearShortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for FictionBerlin, 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 caf. He is never heard from again. He was twenty years

Blindsided by grief and operating with reckless determination

Kalissa’s main priorities are love and family

Her powers were sealed away years ago after she fought back against the government

and song ballads to more familiar objects such as William Hogarth’s graphic satires

although details are suspiciously sketchy

Have you ever awakened from a sleepy delirium one morning and imagined that you lived in a different and glorious world where all the recognized masterpieces in the Western pantheon of art history were painted by women

how low you had to scrape

wide travel

the oldest learning the trade in their 30s

whose fame far outlived its actual tenure on the throne

and fewer still had accommodations above the bare minimum

and lays out the literary antecedents that influenced or shaped both movements