Half Blood Blues: Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2011

by Esi Edugyan

The aftermath of the fall of Paris, 1940. Hieronymus Falk, a rising star on the cabaret scene, is arrested in a cafe and never heard from again. He is twenty years old. A German citizen. And he is black.

Fifty years later, Sid, Hiero's bandmate and the only witness that day, is going back to Berlin. Persuaded by his old friend Chip, Sid discovers there's more to the journey than he thought when Chip shares a mysterious letter, bringing to the surface secrets buried since Hiero's fate was settled.

In Half Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan weaves the horror of betrayal, the burden of loyalty and the possibility that, if you don't tell your story, someone else might tell it for you. And they just might tell it wrong ...

• ISBN10: 1846687756
• ISBN13: 9781846687754
• Publish Date: 2 June 2011
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 14 February 2012
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Serpent's Tail
• Edition: Main
• Format: Paperback (UK Trade)
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

[wcs53]

Although I really enjoyed this book, it left me with some unanswered questions at the end. It’s a story of friendship and survival, switching between Berlin and Paris at the start of WWII and Berlin and Poland in the early 1990s. The main characters are two African Americans, Sid and Chip, who are part of the German jazz scene in the 30s who find themselves caught up in the rise of Nazism. The outbreak of the war causes them to escape to France, along with a young German trumpet genius, Hiero, who is the ‘half-blood’ of the title. Although Sid and Chip are able to obtain the necessary papers to escape Europe, it is more difficult for Hiero to do the same. Some tough decisions have to be made and the ones that are may not necessarily be the best for everyone involved.

This is a great read and I enjoyed how the story unfolded slowly over the two eras it was set in, although there were things that were never fully revealed. The characters are real and the story moves along at a slow, but steady, pace. It took me a little while to get into it, but once I did it didn’t take me long to get through it.

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

While this book wasn’t exciting or fantastic in any way, shape or form; I’m still glad I read it. It was an enjoyable read, real story around focused mainly on the friends and their love for playing Jazz. Half Blood Blues was short listed for the Man Booker and tells the story mainly of Jazz Musicians Sid, Chip and Hiero during World War 2. As they were African Americans they were labelled Rhineland Bastards and end up been abducted by the Nazis. This is a book not only about racism (thankfully not set in American) but a book of friendship during hardships and the music that kept them together. While there is so much else going on in this book that will give you an idea of what to expect in it. Half Blood Blues made me want to break out some Django Reinhardt and use him as my soundtrack for this book. I know he is more ragtime than the Jazz mentioned in the book but I didn’t feel like playing Louis Armstrong while reading about him would work. For me ragtime suited my mood with this book. I can see why this made the short list but I can also why it didn’t win; Half Blood Blues is enjoyable to read but it doesn’t really stand out as a book.