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  • Coming Through Slaughter

  • Written by: Michael Ondaatje
  • Narrated by: Dion Graham
  • Length: 3 hrs and 37 mins
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars (2 ratings)

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Coming Through Slaughter cover art

Coming Through Slaughter

Written by: Michael Ondaatje
Narrated by: Dion Graham
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Publisher's Summary

Many readers still claim this haunting, atmospheric novel of Michael Ondaatje's as their first love—a novel as sensual and erotic today as ever it was. At the turn of the century, the Storyville district of New Orleans had some 2000 prostitutes, 70 professional gamblers, and 30 piano players. But it had only one man who played the cornet like Buddy Bolden—he who cut hair by day at N. Joseph's Shaving Parlor, and at night played jazz, unleashing an unforgettable wildness and passion in crowded rooms. Self-destructively in love with two women, he embodied all the dire claims that music places on its acolytes. At the age of 31, Buddy Bolden went mad. From these sparse facts, Michael Ondaatje has created a story as beautiful and chilling as a New Orleans funeral procession, where even the mourners dance.
©1976 Michael Ondaatje (P)2020 Knopf Canada
Biographical Fiction Literary Fiction
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What the critics say

"Anybody who cares about good writing...should get this book and luxuriate in it." (Minneapolis Tribune)

"One of the most innovative and liberating writers of our time." (Geoff Dyer, The Observer)

"A beautifully detailed story, perhaps the finest jazz novel ever written." (The Sunday Times)

What listeners say about Coming Through Slaughter

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Superb. First rate literature. FIVE STARS

It is all breathtakingly beautiful and poignant—the written words and the performance.
I don’t usually leave reviews but I was stunned to see this book only had one review, and it was 2 stars! IMHO, as a published writer myself, with a university degree in English Language and Literature, this book reaches another, higher level of literature, a level that all great writing aspires to, but rarely achieves. It’s as though poetry, prose and a coronet had a beautiful baby together who grew up to drunkenly write down all this sublime, sumptuous jazz. It’s pure bliss.

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