Cahokia Jazz
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Cahokia Jazz
Narrated by:
Andy Ingalls
Buy Now for £21.19
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Narrated by:
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Andy Ingalls
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By:
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Francis Spufford
About this listen
The bestselling and award-winning author of Golden Hill delivers a "dazzling" (Los Angeles Times), “smoky, brooding noir set in the 1920s” (Slate) that reimagines how American history would be different if, instead of being decimated, indigenous populations had thrived.
Like his earlier novel Golden Hill, Francis Spufford’s Cahokia Jazz inhabits a different version of America, now through the lens of a subtly altered 1920s—a fully imagined world filled with fog, cigarette smoke, dubious motives, danger, and dark deeds. In the main character of hard-boiled detective Joe Barrow, we have a hero of truly epic proportions, a troubled soul to fall in love with as you are swept along by a propulsive and brilliantly twisty plot.
One snowy night at the end of winter, Barrow and his partner find a body on the roof of a skyscraper. Down below, streetcar bells ring, factory whistles blow, Americans drink in speakeasies and dance to the tempo of modern times. But this is Cahokia, the ancient indigenous city beside the Mississippi living on as a teeming industrial metropolis containing people of every race and creed. Among them, peace holds. Just about. Yet that corpse on the roof will spark a week of drama in which this altered world will spill its secrets and be brought, against a soundtrack of jazz clarinets and wailing streetcars, either to destruction or rebirth.
“Atmospheric…many of us will recognize our own held-breath bafflement, caught, as we are, on the darkling plain of our own barely believable times” (The Washington Post).
Critic reviews
"Narrator Andy Ingalls delivers all the nuances of a full cast in Spufford's latest, a literary detective novel that takes place in an alternate universe. In an authoritative tone, Ingalls brings to life Cahokia, located on the banks of the Mississippi. In the novel, this ancient Indigenous society lives on in the 1920s, seeming to flourish in its diversity. But when Barrow discovers a mutilated body, the community's facade of racial coexistence is exposed. Whether Native American, European, or African, each principal character has a unique voice, aiding the listener in following the complex story. Ingalls's skills shine as he smoothly delivers conversations in a hillbilly drawl, an Irish brogue, and the many other voices of the diverse characters. Ingalls is the perfect guide for this complex world."
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