Based on the life of cornet player Buddy Bolden, one of the legendary jazz pioneers of turn-of-the-twentieth-century New Orleans, Coming Through Slaughter is an extraordinary recreation of a remarkable musical life and a tragic conclusion. Through a collage of memoirs, interviews, imaginary conversations and monologues, Ondaatje builds a picture of a man who would work by day at a barber shop and by night unleash his talent to wild audiences who had never experienced such playing. But Buddy was also playing the field with two women, and inside his head was a ticking time-bomb which he was unable to stop.

A beautifully detailed story, perhaps the finest jazz novel ever written - Sunday Times

Not only the best jazz novel ever written, but one of the best novels of any kind published in English in the last ten years - The Musician

Michael Ondaatje is a novelist with the heart of a poet - Chicago Tribune