This book is unique for the evocation of a place through the rhythm of language - as used in conversation, or in suggesting how certain characters are thinking. It is very London - specifically parts of London that I know, where I have lived and met friends. It holds true for a wide perspective of time, from the eighties to the present.

A slender novel of the late nineteenth-century based in Paris. The protagonist, a precious aesthete and anglophile, prepares himself for a journey to London. He fails to accomplish the journey but reaches the conclusion that anticipation, when pursued with passion and precision, is an equal, if not greater reward. Reading the book insinuates a question that never leaves the mind - is his conclusion sublime or absurd, and if sublime what impact should the idea have upon our lives?

Ondaatje’s first novel is a journey through the streets, bars and music halls of New Orleans at the turn of the twentieth-century, focusing on the life and artistic evolution of the innovative trumpeter, Buddy Bolden. Bolden had enormous influence on the birth of jazz, and figures prominently in compositions by Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton, among many others. He died before the advent of recorded music, which makes Ondaatje’s book powerful and poignant as a portrait of Bolden, the music of his time, and the pace of change in early New Orleans.