The Flamethrowers: Rachel Kushner

New
Paperback
2014
$13.61

This is shortlisted for the Folio Prize 2014. It is longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. Reno mounts her motorcycle and sets a collision course for New York. In 1977 the city is alive with art, sensuality and danger. She falls in with a bohemian clique colonising downtown and the lines between reality and performance begin to bleed. A passionate affair with the scion of an Italian tyre empire carries Reno to Milan, where she is swept along by the radical left and drawn into a spiral of violence and betrayal. The Flamethrowers is an audacious novel that explores the perplexing allure of femininity, fakery and fear. In Reno we encounter a heroine like no other. Best Books of the Year: Guardian; New York Times; The Times; Observer; Financial Times; New Yorker; Telegraph; Slate; Oprah; Vogue; Time; Scotsman; and Evening Standard. It is shortlisted for the National Book Awards 2013.

Synopsis

This is shortlisted for the Folio Prize 2014. It is longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. Reno mounts her motorcycle and sets a collision course for New York. In 1977 the city is alive with art, sensuality and danger. She falls in with a bohemian clique colonising downtown and the lines between reality and performance begin to bleed. A passionate affair with the scion of an Italian tyre empire carries Reno to Milan, where she is swept along by the radical left and drawn into a spiral of violence and betrayal. The Flamethrowers is an audacious novel that explores the perplexing allure of femininity, fakery and fear. In Reno we encounter a heroine like no other. Best Books of the Year: Guardian; New York Times; The Times; Observer; Financial Times; New Yorker; Telegraph; Slate; Oprah; Vogue; Time; Scotsman; and Evening Standard. It is shortlisted for the National Book Awards 2013.

$13.61

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 400
Edition: 1
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 02 Jan 2014
ISBN 10: 0099586983
ISBN 13: 9780099586982
Book Overview: An extraordinarily ambitious big American novel about a young artist and the worlds she encounters in New York and Rome in the mid-1970s - by turns underground, elite, dangerous
Prizes: Shortlisted for James Tait Black Memorial Book Prize: Fiction 2014. Long-listed for IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2015 and Folio Prize 2014.

Media Reviews

Scintillatingly alive... It ripples with stories, anecdotes, set-piece monologues, crafty egotistical tall tales, and hapless adventures -- James Wood * New Yorker *
Kushner is rapidly emerging as a thrilling and prodigious novelist -- Jonathan Franzen
One of the most thrilling and high-octane literary experiences I have had in ages -- Colum McCann * Sunday Independent *
It's so good, it's a little frightening... it makes any fretting over the state of the novel look plain silly * Guardian *
An adrenalin-fuelled coming-of-age novel * Sunday Telegraph *
Unfolds on a bigger, brighter screen than nearly any recent American novel I can remember * New York Times *
An ambitious and serious American novel. The sentences are sharp and gorgeously made. The scope is wide. The political and the personal are locked in a deep and fascinating embrace * Colm Toibin *
Dazzling... The Flamethrowers is a virtuoso performance; a ride of ache and pleasure, handled with pinpoint command * The Times *
This glittering novel is both carefully structured and exhilarating * Daily Telegraph *
Rachel Kushner's fearless, blazing prose ignites the 70s New York art scene and Italian underground * Vanity Fair *
A bright burning flame of a novel * Spectator *
The Flamethrowers is a strange, fascinating beast of a novel, brimming with ideas, and sustained by the muscular propulsion of Kushner's prose... Kushner emerges as a wildly gifted artist filling a sketchbook with thrilling, eye-catching scenes -- Robert Collins * Sunday Times *
There is an exhilarating freedom to Kushner's writing... Taut, vividly intelligent prose -- David Wolf * Prospect *
Sparky and inventive...a riot of a novel * Daily Mail *
Ms Kushner's kaleidoscopic prose carries the novel's shifts in location and person, and the fast-paced rhythm harnesses the thrill of adventure * Economist *
Swells with a daunting bravado * Irish Times *

Author Bio

Rachel Kushner's debut novel, Telex from Cuba, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and a New York Times bestseller. Her follow-up novel, The Flamethrowers, was also a finalist for the National Book Award and received rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's and the Paris Review. She lives in Los Angeles.