The Flamethrowers: A Novel

Summary

* Selected as ONE of the BEST BOOKS of the 21st CENTURY by The New York Times * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST * New York magazine’s #1 Book of the Year * Best Book of the Year by: The Wall Street Journal; Vogue; O, The Oprah Magazine; Los Angeles Times; The San Francisco Chronicle; The New Yorker; Time; Flavorwire; Salon; Slate; The Daily Beast

“Superb…Scintillatingly alive…A pure explosion of now.” —The New Yorker

From the National Book Award–nominated author of Telex from Cuba, a brilliant and riveting novel about a young artist and the world she encounters in New York and Rome in the mid-1970s.

Reno, so-called because of the place of her birth, comes to New York intent on turning her fascination with motorcycles and speed into art. Her arrival coincides with an explosion of activity in the New York art scene—artists colonize a deserted and industrial SoHo, stage actions in the East Village, blur the line between life and art. Reno is submitted to a sentimental education of sorts—by dreamers, poseurs, and raconteurs in New York and by political radicals in Italy, where she goes with her lover to meet his estranged and formidable family. Ardent, vulnerable, and bold, Reno is a fiercely memorable observer, superbly realized by Rachel Kushner.