First published 1970
Lincoln Agrippa Daily earns his nickname "Banjo" on the gritty waterfront of 1920s Marseilles. He moves through smoky bistros and harbor taverns with a rotating crew of rootless companions. They drink cheap wine, chase women, and scrounge for work when money runs low. Banjo carries his instrument and plays music that draws crowds and coins. Fights break out over slights real and imagined. The men come from scattered places across the Black diaspora. Some left behind villages in Africa, others escaped Caribbean islands, still others fled the American South. In long conversations that stretch into dawn, they share memories of home and wrestle with what it means to be Black men adrift in a French port city. The waterfront offers temporary freedom from the constraints they knew elsewhere, but also brings new forms of struggle and uncertainty.
Genres: fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, african-american
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate
Tropes: found-family, gritty
Setting: Marseilles
Period: 1920s
336 pages · Paperback · Ecco
Content warnings: violence