Shackling Water [Paperback]

At the age of nineteen, saxophone prodigy Latif James-Pearson boards a bus to Manhattan to find his aging idol, the great Albert Van Horn. The centers of Latif’s universe soon become a Harlem boarding house, where he spends his days practicing intensely, and the downtown club where Van Horn's group performs and Latif hides in the shadows, listening. There, he begins a complex affair with an older white painter named Mona, and starts working for Say Brother, a charismatic drug dealer. But as Latif’s frustrations with his playing mount, and the demands of balancing artistry, hustling, and love push him toward crisis, he is forced to confront his music, his past, and himself. A virtuosic story told with lyrical intensity, Shackling Water heralds the arrival of an important new voice in American literature.“A rushing torrent of swirling, coruscating language, jumpy with jazz-influenced rhythms and shimmering with tumbling shards of urban imagery.” –The Boston Globe

“[Mansbach is] a veritable multi-culti code-switching genius. . . . The novel forges ahead to a powerfully humble conclusion that testifies to the authentic impulses behind creation.” –The San Francisco Bay Guardian

“This might be the best fictional work about jazz since James Baldwin’s beautiful and soulful Sonny’s Blues.” –Library Journal

“Pulls you into passages so rhythmic that for the first few pages you want to stop the meaning from leaking through. You want only to say the words out loud, hear the syllables roll off your lips.” –Boston Magazine

“Mansbach displays a gift for fusing the improvised energy of streetspeak with that of spiraling jazz rifló+