Cahokia Jazz

by Francis Spufford

Recommendations from our site

“Past Five Books interviewee Francis Spufford (Red Plenty, Golden Hill) will also arrive Stateside with a new, propulsive novel that spans genre and literary fiction. Cahokia Jazz is billed as a ‘noirish detective novel’ set in an alternate 1920s America, where the Jazz Age is swinging in the grand old Mississippian city of Cahokia. In our own reality, Cahokia was an ancient indigenous settlement abandoned in the 14th century; in Cahokia Jazz, thanks to a quirk of epidemiological history, the city not only survived but thrived and now acts as the setting of a complex murder mystery set in train by the discovery of a ‘spectacularly butchered’ body on the roof of a skyscraper. It’s been out since October this side of the Atlantic, garnering rave reviews; it will be interesting to see what Americans think of their reminagined nation.” Read more...

Notable Novels of Spring 2024

Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor