He says to Sid at one point: ‘”But music,well it’s different.

Louis Armstrong is their hero and he makes a few appearances in the story. They are hiding not so much behind their music as inside it and the quest for perfection is their steel and ammunition. It is this music and their passion and hunger that makes the novel steer through the obstacles set before the characters. In retrospect, Sid describes the reputation of the Hot-Time Swingers as an illusion: ‘A bunch of German and American kids meeting up in Berlin and Paris between the wars to make all this wild joyful music before the Nazis kick it to pieces?’ Edugyan shows the grim reality: the fear, the dives, the hiding and running, all in counterpoint with their passion for jazz and their hunger for perfection. It shows the persecution of black Germans by the Nazis as the Hot-Time Swingers, Sid Griffiths a half black Baltimore bassist, Chip C Jones, the drummer also black and from Baltimore, Hieronymus Falk, black German trumpeter, Ernst von Hasselberg, rich boy German clarinettist, Fritz, the German saxophonist and Paul their Jewish pianist attempt to keep playing their music as the Nazis declare it degenerate. The story moves between wartime Berlin and Paris and 1992. The novel is abo ut jealousy, friendship and betrayal. Take after take, I’d play sweating to the end of it only to have Hiero scratch the damn disc, toss it in the trash.’ Edugyan’s supreme skill is to maintain this voice faultlessly throughout the book. Too nervous, too crazed, too busy watching the door. Could be we wasn’t so rotten, but I at least fell off. Everyone pacing about listening between takes to the scrabble of rats in the wall. The cig just sitting there in his mouth like he couldn’t hear his way clear. Our cigarettes glowed like small holes in the dark, and that’s how I known we wasn’t buzzing. ‘…A grim little room, more like a closet of ghosts than any joint for music, the cracked heaters lisping steam, empty bottles rolling all over the warped floor. Listen to the sound of Edugyan’s language as Sid describes a recording session:

Narrated by Sid Griffiths, a Baltimore jazz musician living in Nazi Berlin in 1939, the voice thrums like his deep string bass in flawless syncopated rhythms. Edugyan’s second novel is not only a gripping page-turner but beautifully written.

Half blood blues review