Half-Blood Blues

A Novel

De: Esi Edugyan

Narrado por: Kyle Riley

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 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.

©2011 Esi Edugyan (P)2012 WF Howes Ltd

Reseñas de la Crítica

• Man Booker Prize Finalist, 2011

“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)

“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

Wonderful

Half Blood Blues is brilliantly told and brilliantly read. It's fascinating that it is told in the first person by a man, but written by a woman. I don;'t remember reading another such juxtiposition of the sexes.

Esi Edugyan tells us an epic story switching back and forth 60 years from the 1930s to the the 1990s, encompassing the demonic Nazi era in both Germany and France and peopled by very real black and white musicians caught up in the horror.

Kyle Riley creates an accent, presumably Baltimorian black, that renders well the speech of the narrator, Syd, as well as all the other varied voices of Edugyan's many characters.

All in all a great experience.

Slow start, but worth the time.

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I would recommend this book to friends with an open mind. I don't think this is a book that mainstream readers would seek out, but it was worth reading!

What about Kyle Riley’s performance did you like?

Kyle Riley's performance brought the story to life. I really felt like I could see these men and the voices that they had (via Kyle) helped to shape that visual picture.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

By the last half of the book, I was looking forward to driving somewhere so I could find out how it would end!

Any additional comments?

The dialect, names and slang terms were sometimes a little hard to follow.

Seductive and poetic!

the narrator is phenomenal and captured the poetic nature of the book. the rich history of jazz in europe is mesmerizing.

Amazing voice!

I cannot imagine this book without Kyle Riley's voice, so full and rich and deep, so quintessentially African-American male. I might have read the story and registered the skillfully crafted narrative as a fine work of historical fiction with believable characters, but hearing this as an audiobook made me sense the deep longing and despair of the blues musician narrator in a way I may never forget.

Compelling listen

I never expected to get a book about Black jazz musicians in Nazi Germany because it just wasn't on my radar. I knew that there were African Americans living in Europe at the time, but just didn't know there were Black Germans. This book has a German, several American, and a Canadian Black. The German is a brilliant young musician, Hieronymous Falk, the Kid.

The book goes back and forth between 1940 and 1990. Life in 1940 Germany is becoming more dangerous for Blacks as well as jazz musicians, along with Jews, Roma, and other minority groups. I wanted to urge these musicians to leave before they started to, but of course I have the knowledge of history and they did not.

By the time the 1940 segment is over it is believed that Hieronymous has not survived the Nazis. The 1990 portion has a festival celebrating him because of recordings. Two of his band mates are headed there. The story is told first person by Sid.

I'm not going to give spoilers. These are all things we know early on and form the premise of this Anisfield-Wolf Award Winner. I looked up the history of Blacks in Nazi Germany and I want to thank the author for choosing this history for the setting and time of the book. If you choose to listen to or read this book I hope you'll give it a chance. The narration by the author was exceptional. I didn't even realize the author was a woman!