{"id":50015,"date":"2022-11-27T12:12:11","date_gmt":"2022-11-27T17:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=50015"},"modified":"2022-11-20T09:57:05","modified_gmt":"2022-11-20T14:57:05","slug":"the-scent-of-burnt-flowers-by-blitz-bazawule-in-booklist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-scent-of-burnt-flowers-by-blitz-bazawule-in-booklist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Scent of Burnt Flowers by Blitz Bazawule [in Booklist]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-50027\" src=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2022\/11\/Scent-of-Burnt-Flowers-Blitz-Bazawule-BookDragon-530x800.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"530\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2022\/11\/Scent-of-Burnt-Flowers-Blitz-Bazawule-BookDragon-530x800.jpg 530w, https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2022\/11\/Scent-of-Burnt-Flowers-Blitz-Bazawule-BookDragon.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 530px) 100vw, 530px\" \/><strong>*STARRED REVIEW<\/strong><br \/>\nA faux pastor with a costume-shop collar and his not-yet wife; a mermaid with a silver guitar; a pill-popping, weak-hearted FBI agent who withstands gruesome torture; Sidney Poitier signing autographs for Russian soldiers &#8230; fantastical as all that may sound, smooth-talking Dion Graham will make you believe.<\/p>\n<p>Musician\/director Blitz Bazawule makes his debut with a relatively short novel so dense that it\u2019s been picked up for a six-episode FX miniseries. Melvin and Bernadette are on the run after Melvin kills a white man in 1960s Alabama with the racist\u2019s own gun. They flee to Ghana, where Melvin is convinced the president \u2013 because he\u2019s a college friend \u2013 can save their lives. They encounter musician Kwesi, who serendipitously is on his way to play for the president. A love triangle develops; tragedy proves inevitable.<\/p>\n<p>On the page, Bazawule\u2019s original might easily be dismissed as sprawling and messy, infused with clumsy magical realism, cluttered with too many distracting twists \u2013 and yet Graham somehow sifts through the melodrama for another master performance.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Review<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.booklistonline.com\/The-Emma-Project-\/pid=9766981\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">&#8220;Media,&#8221; <em>Booklist<\/em>, September 15, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n<p><strong>Published<\/strong>: 2022<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>*STARRED REVIEW A faux pastor with a costume-shop collar and his not-yet wife; a mermaid with a silver guitar; a pill-popping, weak-hearted FBI agent who withstands gruesome torture; Sidney Poitier signing autographs for Russian soldiers &#8230; fantastical as all that may sound, smooth-talking Dion Graham&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,287,81,6,10602,10603,6535],"tags":[84,10605,6608,6668,1136,11,24,13,672,29,10604],"class_list":["post-50015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-african","category-audio","category-fiction","category-ghanaian","category-ghanaian-american","category-repost","tag-betrayal","tag-blitz-bazawule","tag-bookdragon","tag-booklist","tag-dion-graham","tag-friendship","tag-historical","tag-love","tag-music","tag-race-racism","tag-scent-of-burnt-flowers"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.14 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Scent of Burnt Flowers by Blitz Bazawule [in Booklist] - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-scent-of-burnt-flowers-by-blitz-bazawule-in-booklist\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Scent of Burnt Flowers by Blitz Bazawule [in Booklist] - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"*STARRED REVIEW A faux pastor with a costume-shop collar and his not-yet wife; a mermaid with a silver guitar; a pill-popping, weak-hearted FBI agent who withstands gruesome torture; Sidney Poitier signing autographs for Russian soldiers &#8230; fantastical as all that may sound, smooth-talking Dion Graham...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-scent-of-burnt-flowers-by-blitz-bazawule-in-booklist\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-11-27T17:12:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-11-20T14:57:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2022\/11\/Scent-of-Burnt-Flowers-Blitz-Bazawule-BookDragon.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"906\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@SmithsonianAPA\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Scent of Burnt Flowers by Blitz Bazawule [in Booklist] - BookDragon","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-scent-of-burnt-flowers-by-blitz-bazawule-in-booklist\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Scent of Burnt Flowers by Blitz Bazawule [in Booklist] - BookDragon","og_description":"*STARRED REVIEW A faux pastor with a costume-shop collar and his not-yet wife; 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