The Flamethrowers
by Rachel Kushner
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Pub Date Jun 06 2013 | Archive Date Feb 28 2014
Random House UK, Vintage Publishing | Vintage Digital
Description
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
A Note From the Publisher
UK edition - available for readers in the UK and Commonwealth, excluding Canada.
UK edition - available for readers in the UK and Commonwealth, excluding Canada.
Advance Praise
Scintillatingly alive... It ripples with stories, anecdotes, set-piece monologues, crafty egotistical tall tales, and hapless adventures - New Yorker
One of the most thrilling and high-octane literary experiences I have had in ages - 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
Unfolds on a bigger, brighter screen than nearly any recent American novel I can remember - New York Times
Kushner is rapidly emerging as a thrilling and prodigious novelist
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 Tóibín
An adrenalin-fuelled coming-of-age novel - Sunday Telegraph
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 - Sunday Times
There is an exhilarating freedom to Kushner’s writing… Taut, vividly intelligent prose - 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
Oscillating between the hedonistic New York art world and Italy in the midst of the Years of Lead, The Flamethrowers is that rare thing, a novel that uses recent history not as a picturesque backdrop but as a way of interrogating the present. Kushner's urgent prose and psychological acuity make this one of the most compelling and enjoyable novels I've read this year - Hari Kunzru
The controlled intensity and perception in Rachel Kushner's novels mark her as one of the most brilliant writers of the new century. She's going to be one we turn to for our serious pleasures and for the insight and wisdom we'll be needing in hard times to come. Rachel Kushner is a novelist of the very first order. The Flamethrowers follows Telex from Cuba as a masterful work - Robert Stone
The Flamethrowers lives up to its incendiary title – it is a brilliant, startling truly revolutionary book about the New York art world of the seventies, Italian class warfare, and youth's blind acceleration into the unknown. Kushner is a genius prose stylist, and her Reno is one of the most fully realized protagonists I've ever encountered, moving fluidly from the fringe of the fringe movement to the center of the action. I want to recommend this stunning book to everyone I know - Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!
Rachel Kushner writes dazzling, sexy, glorious prose. She is as brilliant on men and motorcycles as she is on art and film. The Flamethrowers is an ambitious and powerful novel. - Dana Spiotta, author of Eat the Document and Stone Arabia
A high-wire performance worthy of Philippe Petit... Hang on: this is a trip you don’t want to miss - Washington Post
Wow! What a book! I'm eager for everyone I know to read it. It's an example of the very best in contemporary fiction…a contemporary masterpiece, and it wants you all to read it
A dazzlingly exciting novel... This is a deeply intelligent and engaging novel that uses all the virtues of old-fashioned storytelling to celebrate the triumphs and absurdities of new-fangled art - Sunday Express
The Flamethrowers has gained praise from Jonathan Franzen and drawn comparisons with Patti Smith's Just Kids as it epically leaps between the New York art scene of the late 1970s and Italy in the midst of revolution... An essential summer read - Grazia
Exhilirating, psychologically complex, and perfectly intense, this is a thrilling contemporary novel likely to become a cultural touchstone - Flavorwire
A brilliant lightning bolt of a novel - Maud Newton, NPR
In this extremely bold, swashbuckling novel, romantic and disillusioned at once, intellectually daring and even subversive, Rachel Kushner has created the most beguiling American ingénue abroad, well, maybe ever: Daisy Miller as a sharply observant yet vulnerable Reno-raised motorcycle racer and aspiring artist, set loose in gritty 70s New York and the Italy of the Red Brigades - Francisco Goldman, author of Say Her Name
Riveting - Time
Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers is remarkable for its expansiveness and for its exhilarating succession of ideas - The List
National Book Award finalist Rachel Kushner brings NYC's art scene to life so well in The Flamethrowers you could get high off the paint - Entertainment Weekly
Fast-paced, sexy and smart - Cosmopolitan
Electric...addictive...smart and satisfying - Oprah Magazine
Captivating and compelling - The Bookbag
This is a work of ferocious energy and imaginative verve, straining at the seams with ideas, riffs, jokes, set-pieces, belly-laughs, horror and heartbreak - Booktrust
Kushner writes with authority, passion and humour, her characters richly drawn and her story packed with delicious anecdotes and side lines from a wide array of memorable characters - We Love This Book
Sexy and brilliant - Sunday Times Style
Incandescent - Image
Kushner's second novel comes loaded with recommendations and it's easy to see why…highly unusual and written with great seriousness and potency - Guardian
Kushner’s writing is a kind of marvel - Irish Examiner
One of the most thrilling and high-octane literary experiences I have had in ages - 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
Unfolds on a bigger, brighter screen than nearly any recent American novel I can remember - New York Times
Kushner is rapidly emerging as a thrilling and prodigious novelist
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 Tóibín
An adrenalin-fuelled coming-of-age novel - Sunday Telegraph
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 - Sunday Times
There is an exhilarating freedom to Kushner’s writing… Taut, vividly intelligent prose - 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
Oscillating between the hedonistic New York art world and Italy in the midst of the Years of Lead, The Flamethrowers is that rare thing, a novel that uses recent history not as a picturesque backdrop but as a way of interrogating the present. Kushner's urgent prose and psychological acuity make this one of the most compelling and enjoyable novels I've read this year - Hari Kunzru
The controlled intensity and perception in Rachel Kushner's novels mark her as one of the most brilliant writers of the new century. She's going to be one we turn to for our serious pleasures and for the insight and wisdom we'll be needing in hard times to come. Rachel Kushner is a novelist of the very first order. The Flamethrowers follows Telex from Cuba as a masterful work - Robert Stone
The Flamethrowers lives up to its incendiary title – it is a brilliant, startling truly revolutionary book about the New York art world of the seventies, Italian class warfare, and youth's blind acceleration into the unknown. Kushner is a genius prose stylist, and her Reno is one of the most fully realized protagonists I've ever encountered, moving fluidly from the fringe of the fringe movement to the center of the action. I want to recommend this stunning book to everyone I know - Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!
Rachel Kushner writes dazzling, sexy, glorious prose. She is as brilliant on men and motorcycles as she is on art and film. The Flamethrowers is an ambitious and powerful novel. - Dana Spiotta, author of Eat the Document and Stone Arabia
A high-wire performance worthy of Philippe Petit... Hang on: this is a trip you don’t want to miss - Washington Post
Wow! What a book! I'm eager for everyone I know to read it. It's an example of the very best in contemporary fiction…a contemporary masterpiece, and it wants you all to read it
A dazzlingly exciting novel... This is a deeply intelligent and engaging novel that uses all the virtues of old-fashioned storytelling to celebrate the triumphs and absurdities of new-fangled art - Sunday Express
The Flamethrowers has gained praise from Jonathan Franzen and drawn comparisons with Patti Smith's Just Kids as it epically leaps between the New York art scene of the late 1970s and Italy in the midst of revolution... An essential summer read - Grazia
Exhilirating, psychologically complex, and perfectly intense, this is a thrilling contemporary novel likely to become a cultural touchstone - Flavorwire
A brilliant lightning bolt of a novel - Maud Newton, NPR
In this extremely bold, swashbuckling novel, romantic and disillusioned at once, intellectually daring and even subversive, Rachel Kushner has created the most beguiling American ingénue abroad, well, maybe ever: Daisy Miller as a sharply observant yet vulnerable Reno-raised motorcycle racer and aspiring artist, set loose in gritty 70s New York and the Italy of the Red Brigades - Francisco Goldman, author of Say Her Name
Riveting - Time
Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers is remarkable for its expansiveness and for its exhilarating succession of ideas - The List
National Book Award finalist Rachel Kushner brings NYC's art scene to life so well in The Flamethrowers you could get high off the paint - Entertainment Weekly
Fast-paced, sexy and smart - Cosmopolitan
Electric...addictive...smart and satisfying - Oprah Magazine
Captivating and compelling - The Bookbag
This is a work of ferocious energy and imaginative verve, straining at the seams with ideas, riffs, jokes, set-pieces, belly-laughs, horror and heartbreak - Booktrust
Kushner writes with authority, passion and humour, her characters richly drawn and her story packed with delicious anecdotes and side lines from a wide array of memorable characters - We Love This Book
Sexy and brilliant - Sunday Times Style
Incandescent - Image
Kushner's second novel comes loaded with recommendations and it's easy to see why…highly unusual and written with great seriousness and potency - Guardian
Kushner’s writing is a kind of marvel - Irish Examiner
Marketing Plan
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.
For fans of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jonathan Franzen's Freedom and Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot
The big American novel of 2013
Scott Rudin has bought the film rights to this novel
From the bestselling American author of Telex from Cuba, which was nominated for a National Book Award
'Kushner is rapidly emerging as a thrilling and prodigious novelist' - Jonathan Franzen
The book has received overwhelming rave reviews across the board in the US, including a 5 page rave in The New Yorker from James Wood
Shortlisted for the 2013 National Book Awards
For fans of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jonathan Franzen's Freedom and Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot
The big American novel of 2013
Scott Rudin has bought the film rights to this novel
From the bestselling American author of Telex from Cuba, which was nominated for a National Book Award
'Kushner is rapidly emerging as a thrilling and prodigious novelist' - Jonathan Franzen
The book has received overwhelming rave reviews across the board in the US, including a 5 page rave in The New Yorker from James Wood
Shortlisted for the 2013 National Book Awards
Available Editions
| EDITION | Ebook |
| ISBN | 9781448182282 |
| PRICE | £9.98 (GBP) |
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