Half-Blood Blues
A Novel
by Esi Edugyan
Paris, 1939. A young, black, brilliant trumpet-player, Hieronymus, is hauled off by the Nazis to Mauthausen based on the colour of his skin. As the novel unfolds, Sid, the narrator and conscience of the novel, details the friendships, love affairs, and treacheries that led to Hiero’s horrific fate. From the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin to the salons of Paris, Sid, with his distinctive and compelling German-American slang, leads the reader through a fascinating, little-known world, and into the heart of his own guilty conscience.
Half-Blood Blues, the second novel by an exceptionally talented young writer, is an enticing, electric story about music, race, love and loyalty, and the sacrifices we ask of ourselves, and demand of others, in the name of art.
close this panelEsi Edugyan has degrees in writing from the University of Victoria and Johns Hopkins University. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Best New American Voices 2003, ed. Joyce Carol Oates, and Revival: An Anthology of Black Canadian Writing (2006). Her debut novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, was published internationally. It was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, was a More Book Lust selection, and was chosen by the New York Public Library as one of 2004’s Books to Remember. She was born in Calgary and currently lives in Victoria, British Columbia.
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