I have been welded to this book since I took it out of the library three days ago - started reading it on the train into town - got off the train and headed straight for a cafe so I could read a bit more - got antsy on the way home because I was too loaded with shopping to manage a book - read it with one hand while I was cooking my supper - read it in the bath - read it in bed ...
Read it at my desk this afternoon while I was supposed to be working.
It begins in Paris, in 1940, where a group of black jazz musicians have fled from Berlin - two of them black Americans, but one a mischling, a Rhineland bastard, the illegitimate offspring of a German mother and one of the French Senegalese forces occupying the Rhineland after WW1. There were about 4,000 Germans of African descent. I don't think I have ever read about them before.
I've finished the book. Still got that half-dazed, bereft feeling at stepping back to the here and now, my head still ringing with the blues and the tramp of jackboots. I've barely started the work but that's tomorrow's problem. And there's lots more glowing reviews here.