num_pages: 400
description: During World War II two African American musicians are captured by the Nazis in Paris and imprisoned at the Buchenwald concentration camp.The Book of Harlan opens with the courtship of Harlans parents and his 1917 birth in Macon Georgia. After his prominent minister grandfather dies Harlan and his parents move to Harlem where he becomes a musician. Soon Harlan and his best friend trumpeter Lizard Robbins are lured across the Atlantic Ocean to perform at a popular cabaret in the Parisian enclave of Montmartreaffectionately referred to as The Harlem of Paris by black American musicians.When the City of Light falls under Nazi occupation Harlan and Lizard are thrown into Buchenwald the notorious concentration camp in Weimar Germany. The experience irreparably changes the course of Harlans life. Based on exhaustive research and told in McFaddens mesmeric prose The Book of Harlan skillfully blends the stories of McFaddens familial ancestors with those of real and imagined characters.
language: English
title: The Book of Harlan
publisher: Akashic Books