Half-Blood Blues

Published in 2011, Half-Blood Blues is the second book by Esi Edugyan, a black Canadian author. The novel won the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2012 and was also shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize and the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction. As historical fiction, the story examines the lives of a diverse group of jazz musicians during World War II as they balance personal jealousies with the need to help each other amid mounting political oppression. It also deals with the ramifications of their actions in later years, showing how honesty can open the way to redemption.

Plot Summary

Half-Blood Blues follows two distinct storylines, set 50 years apart. The first involves the struggles of a group of jazz musicians who are compelled to flee Nazi Germany in 1939. The second follows several of the same characters some 50 years later, as they reconnect in unexpected ways. The entire novel is narrated by Sidney “Sid” Griffiths, an African American bass player whose witty, colloquial narration frames his need to make sense of the past.

Parts 1, 3, and 5 are set in Europe at the onset of World War II. Sid opens by describing a crucial episode—the capture of his friend and bandmate Hieronymus “Hiero” Falk, who is denigrated by the Nazis for his mixed German and African ancestry, in occupied Paris. Hiero is then sent to, and presumably dies in, a concentration camp.

Sid backtracks to narrate the events leading up to Hiero’s arrest, starting with a violent scuffle with Nazi soldiers in Berlin a year earlier, which causes the band to go into hiding. Fortunately, a singer named Delilah Brown invites them to Paris to record with Louis Armstrong, and they accept, though it takes a while for them to get there, with several members of the group getting separated along the way. Sid and Delilah become romantically involved, but he remains jealous of the attention she lavishes on Hiero, who is the more talented musician.

In Paris, plans to record with Armstrong are not fully realized before the German army takes over the city, but Sid, Chip, and Hiero choose to keep recording in secret. Just as they are about to produce a promising record, Hiero’s transit papers arrive, but Sid hides them, wanting more time to record. Hiero is then captured, not knowing that Sid concealed his papers. Suspecting the truth, Delilah leaves Sid.

Parts 2, 4, and 6 are set five decades later, in 1992, and detail the reunion of Sid with Charles “Chip” Jones, another one of his bandmates, who was with him in Paris and Berlin. Chip and Sid attend the premiere of a documentary about Hiero. In the film Chip accuses Sid of betraying Hiero out of jealousy. Sid walks out, but Chip apologizes and invites him to visit Hiero in Poland; Sid refuses to believe that Hiero is alive, since no one has seen him since the war, but he goes with Chip. A flight and a long bus ride later, they arrive at Hiero’s home and find him alive, though blind. Wracked with guilt, Sid explains what he did to Hiero, who hints at forgiveness.

Much of the novel centers on Sid’s internal conflict between jealousy at Hiero’s effortless musical genius and his brotherly concern for the younger musician, but Edugyan also directs our attention to broader social and political concerns, such as the varieties of prejudice that hold sway not only in Nazi Germany but around the world, as well as the power of music to transcend cultural differences.