Recommendations
for New Orleans

Coming Through Slaughter

Michael Ondaatje

New Orleans, shortly after 1900: Buddy Bolden, womanizer, barber and cornetist, is considered the man who invented jazz. One day he disappears. His old friend Webb hunts him down in Storyville, New Orleans' whorehouse district, and brings Buddy back to Canal Street, the site of orgiastic music parades where Buddy plays until he goes mad.

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. read more