Francis Spufford: Cahokia Jazz

Friday 31 May, 6 - 7pm, QUAD

A thrilling tale of murder and mystery in a city where history has run a little differently from the best-selling author of Golden Hill, which won many prizes, including the Costa First Novel Award.

It’s 1922 and Americans are drinking in speakeasies, dancing to jazz, stepping quickly to the tempo of modern times. In the ancient city of Cahokia – a teeming industrial metropolis, a tinderbox of every race and creed – peace holds. Just about.

But on a snowy night at the end of winter, two roughshod detectives are called to the roof of a skyscraper. Their investigation will spill the city’s secrets and bring it, against a soundtrack of wailing clarinets, either to destruction or rebirth.

Francis Spufford is the author of five highly-praised works of non-fiction, most frequently described by reviewers as either 'bizarre' or 'brilliant', and usually as both. His debut novel Golden Hill won the Costa First Novel Award, the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize, and was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award and the British Book Awards Debut Novel of the Year. His second novel, Light Perpetual, was awarded the 2022 Encore Award and longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Francis will be in conversation with Professor Keith McLay, our Festival Chair and Provost for Learning and Teaching at the University of Derby.

'Utterly immersive.' Spectator

'Thrilling.' Financial Times

'Unlike anything else you will read this year.' Daily Express

'A classic of alternative history.' Observer

'A delight.' Sunday Telegraph

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