The flamethrowers
Subtitle: a novel
By: Rachel Kushner
Edition: 1st Scribner hardcover ed.
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2013
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 387
ISBN-13: 9781439142004; 9781439142011; 9781439154175
Subjects: Fiction; Brigate rosse; Women artists; Motorcycles; Futurism
Description: The year is 1975 and Reno--so-called because of the place of her birth--has come to New York intent on turning her fascination with motorcycles and speed into art. Her arrival coincides with an explosion of activity in the art world--artists have colonized a deserted and industrial SoHo, are staging actions in the East Village, and are blurring the line between life and art. Reno meets a group of dreamers and raconteurs who submit her to a sentimental education of sorts. Ardent, vulnerable, and bold, she begins an affair with an artist named Sandro Valera, the semi-estranged scion of an Italian tire and motorcycle empire. When they visit Sandro's family home in Italy, Reno falls in with members of the radical movement that overtook Italy in the seventies. Betrayal sends her reeling into a clandestine undertow. - from cover p. [2]