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Digital Audiobook
Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje

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Coming Through Slaughter

Narrator
Dion Graham
Publisher
Random House
Publish Date
27 February 2025
Run Time
3 hours 38 minutes
Format
Audiobook

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Discover Michael Ondaatje's debut novel, 'a beautifully detailed story, perhaps the finest jazz novel ever written' Sunday Times


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.

© Michael Ondaatje 1979 (P) Penguin Audio 2024

Critics Review

  • The downtown world of bars, whores, streetlife bursting with music is evoked so vividly, so pungently you seem to breathe in the atmosphere... I haven't been so excited by a new writer for a long time

    Time Out

  • A beautifully detailed story, perhaps the finest jazz novel ever written

    Sunday Times

  • Not only the best jazz novel ever written, but one of the best novels of any kind published in English in the last ten years

    The Musician

  • Michael Ondaatje is a novelist with the heart of a poet

    Chicago Tribune

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Details

Author
Michael Ondaatje
Narrator
Dion Graham
Duration
3 hours 38 minutes
Release Date
27 February 2025
ISBN
9781529942385
Format
Audiobook
Publisher
Random House
Genre
Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Biographical fiction / autobiographical fiction, Street fiction / urban fiction, Historical fiction, Musicians, singers, bands and groups

Synopsis

Brought to you by Penguin.Discover Michael Ondaatje's debut novel, 'a beautifully detailed story, perhaps the finest jazz novel ever written' Sunday TimesBased 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.© Michael Ondaatje 1979 (P) Penguin Audio 2024

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