Cahokia Jazz - Francis Spufford - November 16th 2023

Award-winning author Francis Spufford will discuss his fantastic new novel Cahokia Jazz.

A thrilling tale of murder and mystery in a city where history has run a little differently — from the bestselling author of Golden Hill and Light Perpetual.

Cahokia Jazz:

In a city that never was, in an America that never was, on a snowy night at the end of winter, two detectives find a body on the roof of a skyscraper.

It’s 1922, and Americans are drinking in speakeasies, dancing to jazz, stepping quickly to the tempo of modern times. Beside the Mississippi, the ancient city of Cahokia lives on – a teeming industrial metropolis, containing every race and creed. Among them, peace holds. Just about. But that body on the roof is about to spark off a week that will spill the city’s secrets, and bring it, against a soundtrack of wailing clarinets and gunfire, either to destruction or rebirth.

The multiple-award-winning Francis Spufford returns, with a lovingly created, richly pleasure-giving, epically scaled tale set in the golden age of wicked entertainments.

Image by Antonio Olmos

Click here to book

 

Location

Parabola Arts Centre

Cheltenham Ladies College

Bayshill Road

Cheltenham

GL50 3AA