Books by Rachel Kushner
Rachel Kushner’s debut novel, Telex from Cuba, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and a New York Times bestseller. Her follow-up novel, The Flamethrowers, was also a finalist for the National Book Award and received rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s and the Paris Review. She lives in Los Angeles.
“Thanks for asking. I’ve just picked up a copy of Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake. I loved—loved—her earlier novel of strip bars and women’s prisons, The Mars Room, which fizzed with life and humour despite its sometimes bleak subject matter. This new novel follows a female American spy as she infiltrates a French eco-terrorist group, was an instant New York Times bestseller on its release in September, and it has already been shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize.” Read more...
Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor
The Mars Room
by Rachel Kushner
The Mars Room, set in a women’s prison, was one of the best novels of 2018, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and convincing the chair of the judges, Kwame Anthony Appiah, of the urgent need for prison reform. In the audiobook, Rachel Kushner narrates The Mars Room to great effect.
Narrator: Rachel Kushner
Length: 9 hours and 41 minutes
The Flamethrowers
by Rachel Kushner
Some of the book takes place in revolutionary Italy, but much of it is set in the art world of the 1970s.
Interviews with Rachel Kushner
Rachel Kushner on Books That Influenced Her
Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers and The Mars Room, which has been shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize, discusses the five books that have most influenced her writing, from Dostoyevsky to Marguerite Duras. She muses on the question of what fiction can offer: “A novel itself, if it is good, and effective at whatever its particular aesthetic and philosophical aim is, can answer the question best, so that a novelist doesn’t have to.”
Interviews where books by Rachel Kushner were recommended
Hermione Hoby on New York Novels
The writer and journalist Hermione Hoby’s highly acclaimed first novel is set during a New York heatwave. Here she picks five books inspired by this capacious, overstated, indomitable city and discusses how it shaped her as a writer.
The Best Fiction of 2018, recommended by Kwame Anthony Appiah
Looking for the best novels of the year? Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy at New York University and chair of the 2018 Man Booker Prize for fiction, gives an in-depth breakdown of the six books that made this year’s shortlist, and reflects on why the novel as a form is stronger than ever.
Notable Novels of Fall 2024, recommended by Cal Flyn
Our deputy editor Cal Flyn compiles her autumnal literary fiction highlights: five freshly released and hotly anticipated new novels that you should have on your reading list in the fall of 2024: from Sally Rooney to Garth Greenwell.
