Photo: Antonio Olmos
Cahokia Jazz
with Francis Spufford
in conversation with Nell Frizzell
Friday 5 April, 6.00pm - 7.00pm
Waterstones, Unit 72 Midsummer Place,
Central Milton Keynes, Milton Keynes MK9 3GA
Tickets: £10/£7
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.
About Francis Spufford
Francis Spufford is the author of five works of non-fiction and three novels. His debut novel, Golden Hill, won the Costa First Novel Award, the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize. His second novel, Light Perpetual, was awarded the 2022 Encore Award and longlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2007, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and lives near Cambridge. His most recent novel, Cahokia Jazz, was published in 2023.
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About Nell Frizzell
Nell Frizzell is a writer, journalist and Vogue columnist. She has written and worked for the Guardian, VICE, The Sunday Times, the BBC and Grazia among many others. Her first book, The Panic Years, was an exploration of bodies, babies and the big questions facing modern life. Her debut novel, Square One, painted a humorous picture of moving home, fathers and daughters and surviving heartbreak. Her latest book, Holding The Baby, is a memoir and a manifesto on early parenting and how we can improve it. She lives in Oxford, in a very small house full of pasta and bedding and bikes.
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