Named a Best Book of 2013 by
The New York Times; Vogue; O, The Oprah Magazine; Time; Bookish; New York magazine;
The New Yorker; Slate; Flavorwire; Publishers Weekly; Kirkus Reviews; Salon; and
Complex. Rachel Kushner’s
The Flamethrowers, a finalist for
the National Book Award, was just named a Top Ten Book of 2013 by the
New York Times Book Review and one of
Time magazine’s top ten fiction books. Kushner’s first novel,
Telex from Cuba, was also a finalist for a National Book Award and was reviewed on the cover of
The New York Times Book Review.
The Flamethrowers, even more ambitious and brilliant, is the riveting story of a young artist and the worlds she encounters in New York and Rome in the mid-1970s—by turns underground, elite, and dangerous.
The year is 1975 and Reno—so-called because of the place of her birth—has come to New York intent on turning her fascination with motorcycles and speed into art. Her arrival coincides with an explosion of activity in the art world—artists have colonized a deserted and industrial SoHo, are staging actions in the East Village, and are blurring the line between life and art. Reno meets a group of dreamers and raconteurs who submit her to a sentimental education of sorts. Ardent, vulnerable, and bold, she begins an affair with an artist named Sandro Valera, the semi-estranged scion of an Italian tire and motorcycle empire. When they visit Sandro’s family home in Italy, Reno falls in with members of the radical movement that overtook Italy in the seventies. Betrayal sends her reeling into a clandestine undertow.
The Flamethrowers is an intensely engaging exploration of the mystique of the feminine, the fake, the terrorist. At its center is Kushner’s brilliantly realized protagonist, a young woman on the verge. Thrilling and fearless, this is a major American novel from a writer of spectacular talent and imagination.
From the bestselling author whose debut novel, "Telex from Cuba," was nominated for a National Book Award comes an extraordinarily ambitious new novel about a young artist and the worlds she encounters in New York and Rome in the mid-1970s.
“
The Flamethrowers is about machines (motorcycles and guns, but also cameras) and the way they revolutionized the last century (its politics and violence, but also its art)…[Kushner’s] style is
a rare blend of romanticism and historicism—with a sense of precision.”
