The Flamethrowers

The Flamethrowers

Summary

FROM THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLISTED AUTHOR OF THE MARS ROOM

SHORTLISTED FOR THE FOLIO PRIZE 2014

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 * Evening Standard *

Shortlisted for the National Book Awards 2013

Reviews

  • Scintillatingly alive... It ripples with stories, anecdotes, set-piece monologues, crafty egotistical tall tales, and hapless adventures
    James Wood, New Yorker

About the author

Rachel Kushner

Rachel Kushner is the author of The Hard Crowd, her acclaimed essay collection, and the internationally bestselling novels The Mars Room, The Flamethrowers, and Telex from Cuba, as well as a book of short stories, The Strange Case of Rachel K. She has won the Prix Médicis and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Folio Prize, and was twice a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. She is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and the recipient of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her books are translated into twenty-seven languages.
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