Our 6th and final nominated author is another Canadian, Esi Edugyan. Her latest novel, Half-Blood Blues is described as ‘an electric, heart-breaking story about music, race, love and loyalty, and the sacrifices we ask of ourselves, and demand of others, in the name of art.’
Edugyan has recently won the the Scotiabank Giller Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize. She was also short listed for the 2012 Orange Prize.
Half-Blood Blues…….
Europe, 1939. A young, brilliant trumpet-player, Hieronymus, is arrested in a Paris café. The star musician was never heard from again. He was twenty years old. He was a German citizen. And he was black.
Fifty years later, Sidney Griffiths, the only witness that day, still refuses to speak of what he saw. When Chip Jones, his friend and fellow band member, comes to visit, recounting the discovery of a strange letter, Sid begins a slow journey towards redemption.
From the smoky bars of pre-was Berlin to the salons of Paris, Sid leads the reader through a fascinating, little-known world, and into the heart of his own guilty conscience.
About the Author
Born and raised in Calgary, Alberta to Ghanaian immigrant parents, she studied Creative writing at the University of Victoria and Johns Hopkins University, before publishing her first novel, The second life of Samuel Tyne in 2004. Edugyan is married to poet and novelist Steven Price, they live in Vancouver with their daughter.
Reviews
'Assured, vivid and persuasive... Impressively evocative of period and place, and an effortlessly involving and dramatically unusual second novel.' --Time Out
‘Extraordinary in its evocation of time and place, its shimmering jazz vernacular, its pitch-perfect male banter and its period slang' --Arifa Akbar, Independent
‘A densely researched tale musing on timeless themes of jealousy and betrayal' --Daily Mail
