num_pages: 152
description: Brilliantly conceived and written at a breakneck pace, it is a loving, imaginative, and, above all, passionate tribute to the art of bicycle road racing.  Not a dry history of the sport, The Rider is beloved as a bicycle odyssey, a literary masterpiece that describes in painstaking detail one 150-kilometer race in a mere 150 pages. We are, every inch of the way, inside amateur biker Tim Krabbé's head as his mind churns at top speed along with his furious peddling. Privy to his every thought-on the glory and vagaries of the sport itself, the weather, the characters and lineage of his rival cyclists, almost hallucinogenic anecdotes about great riders of the past-the book progresses kilometer by kilometer, thought by thought, and the reader is left breathless and exhilarated.  A thrillingly realistic look at what it is like to compete in a road race, The Rider is the ultimate book for bike lovers as well as the arm-chair sports enthusiast. &lt;
language: English
title: The Rider
titlecomplete: The Rider
genres: Fiction, 20th Century, France, Sports, Dutch Literature, Bicycles, Literature, Cycling, Adventure, Novels
ratings_count: 6590
awards: awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Vondel Prize
category: Sam Garrett
publisher: Bloomsbury USA