Learn about Michael Ondaatje's debut book, which the Sunday Times called "a superbly crafted masterpiece, probably the finest jazz novel ever written." Coming Through Slaughter is an incredible reproduction of a spectacular musical life and a devastating ending. It is based on the life of cornet player Buddy Bolden, one of the legendary jazz pioneers of New Orleans at the start of the twentieth century. Ondaatje creates a portrait of a man who would labour by day at a barbershop and by night unleash his genius to raucous crowds who had never seen such playing through a collage of memoirs, interviews, fictitious dialogues, and monologues. Buddy, though, was also playing the field with two ladies, and he was unable to stop the ticking time bomb that was within his head.