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Coming Through Slaughter

Coming Through Slaughter

Author(s): Michael Ondaatje

Location(s): New Orleans

Genre(s): Novella

Era(s): First half of the 20th Century

Location

Content

Based on the life of cornet player Buddy Bolden, one of the legendary jazz pioneers of turn-of-the-twentieth-century New Orleans, Coming Through Slaughter is an extraordinary recreation of a remarkable musical life and a tragic conclusion. Through a collage of memoirs, interviews, imaginary conversations and monologues, Ondaatje builds a picture of a man who would work by day at a barber shop and by night unleash his talent to wild audiences who had never experienced such playing. But Buddy was also playing the field with two women, and inside his head was a ticking time-bomb which he was unable to stop.

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Lead Review

‘A beautifully detailed story, perhaps the finest jazz novel ever written’ Sunday Times ‘The downtown world of bars, whores, streetlife bursting with music is evoked so vividly, so pungently you seem to breathe in...

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