The Flamethrowers
A nominee for the National Book Award and the Folio Prize, it was selected as the best book of 2013 by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Time, Flavorwire, Salon, and Slate.
Rachel Kushner, with her metallic prose—a prose of precision in which galloping imagination is masterfully balanced with a grounding in reality—takes us on a journey through America and Italy during the electric 1970s, but also to the events that shaped the world as we know it today, on the eve of the First and in the midst of the Second World War.
A young woman, Rino, passionate about skiing, speed, motorbikes and art, finds herself at the heart of events, in the pulsating fields of successive revolutions, of ceaseless, albeit spasmodic, quests. She thirsts for life, for love, for experiences, whether on motorbikes or with Molotov cocktails, in avant-garde art galleries in New York or in street battles on the rebellious streets of Rome.
Rino, as the embodiment of fiery youth, does not want to be a follower or a passive spectator of life, but to be the one who shapes events.
- Pages: 560
- ISBN: 978-960-572-051-3
- Publication: 2014
- Categories: Literature, eBooks, Foreign Literature
Explosively vivid prose in the novel by American author Rachel Kushner, which moves with ease between desolate Nevada, New York, the Amazon and Italy, between proto-fascism and left-wing politics.
– Michalis Modinos, Ta NeaRino is a compelling and at the same time touching narrator, as Kushner allows her the naivety and spontaneity of youth, although she rarely utters or thinks anything predictable or clichéd. At the races in the Salt Flats, she sets a new record, reaching 308 miles per hour and officially becoming the fastest woman on the planet in 1976. She was then invited to compete in a race promoting Valera tyres, called the ‘Spirit of Italy’.
– Argyro Mantoglou, bookpress.grRachel Kushner
Rachel Kushner’s second novel, The Flamethrowers, was shortlisted for the 2013 National Book Award and featured in the New York Times’ Top Ten Books of 2013. It was named the Times Critics’ Choice and topped numerous lists of the Best Books of 2013, including those of the BBC, Time, Vogue, Oprah, Slate, the Guardian, and the New Yorker. New York magazine named it the number one book of 2013. Kushner’s first novel, *Telex from Cuba*, was shortlisted for the 2008 National Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, whilst winning the California Book Award and the New York Times Notable Book Award. Kushner is the only author to have been shortlisted for the National Book Award for both her first and second novels. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, the Financial Times, The Paris Review, and Art Forum. She is a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow.
