Rachel Kushner's novel 'The Flamethrowers' blazes a trail through the '70s
THE American novelist Rachel Kushner will appear at next week’s Kilkenny Arts Festival. Her debut novel, Telex From Cuba, was shortlisted for the 2008 National Book Award, and her follow-up, The Flamethrowers, is already being hailed as one of the finest novels to be published this year.
The Flamethrowers’ scope is sprawling. It has sex and big ideas, and it flits between different worlds — the salt flats of Utah; the ’70s New York art scene; Italy’s radical political movement in ’77; and detours to steamy places like late-19th century Egypt and Brazil’s rubber plantations — as Reno, a 23-year-old ingénue, makes her way in the world of art and motorcycles.
