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

Publisher Review

Swells with a daunting bravado * Irish Times * 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 * Sparky and inventive...a riot of a novel * Daily Mail * There is an exhilarating freedom to Kushner's writing... Taut, vividly intelligent prose -- David Wolf * Prospect * 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 * A bright burning flame of a novel * Spectator * Rachel Kushner's fearless, blazing prose ignites the 70s New York art scene and Italian underground * Vanity Fair * This glittering novel is both carefully structured and exhilarating * Daily Telegraph * Dazzling... The Flamethrowers is a virtuoso performance; a ride of ache and pleasure, handled with pinpoint command * The 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 * Unfolds on a bigger, brighter screen than nearly any recent American novel I can remember * New York Times * An adrenalin-fuelled coming-of-age novel * Sunday Telegraph * It's so good, it's a little frightening... it makes any fretting over the state of the novel look plain silly * Guardian * One of the most thrilling and high-octane literary experiences I have had in ages -- Colum McCann * Sunday Independent * Kushner is rapidly emerging as a thrilling and prodigious novelist -- Jonathan Franzen Scintillatingly alive... It ripples with stories, anecdotes, set-piece monologues, crafty egotistical tall tales, and hapless adventures -- James Wood * New Yorker *