Лучшие книги Рэйчел Кушнер

Роми Холл — бывшая стриптизерша. Но это в прошлом. В будущем — два пожизненных срока в одной из тюрем Калифорнии. За забором остались маленький сын Джексон и Сан-Франциско ее молодости. Внутри тюрьмы ее ожидает новая реальность: тысячи женщин, пытающихся выжить, жестокость охраны и заключенных, абсурд жизни за решеткой, описанный с юмором и вниманием к деталям. "Комната на Марсе" — роман, шокирующий в своей откровенности и совсем не сентиментальный в описаниях быта женщин, чья жизнь превратилась в катастрофу.

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.

The Flamethrowers is an intensely engaging exploration of the mystique of the feminine, the fake, the terrorist. At its center is Kushner’s brilliantly realized protagonist, a young woman on the verge. Thrilling and fearless, this is a major American novel from a writer of spectacular talent and imagination.

From the National Book Award Finalist and New York Times bestselling author of The Flamethrowers, an astonishingly wise, ambitious, and riveting novel set in the American community in Cuba during the years leading up to Castro's revolution—a place that was a paradise for a time and for a few. The first novel to tell the story of the Americans who were driven out in 1958, this is a masterful debut with a unique and necessary lens into US-Cuba relations.

Sadie Smith--a sardonic, strikingly sexy, 30-something American undercover agent of questionable morals--is sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France. Her instructions are to infiltrate a commune of radical eco-activists and coax them into violent action, provoking the French state to crush them and their dangerous ideas for good. At first Sadie finds Bruno’s idealism laughable--he lives in a Neanderthal cave and believes the path to enlightenment is a return to primitivism--but over time she falls for his narrative. His ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own devastating story become impossible to turn away from.

Beneath this parodic spy novel about a woman caught in the crossfire between the past and the future lies a profound treatise on human history. Written in short, vaulting sections, Creation Lake is Rachel Kushner’s finest achievement yet as a novelist--a work of high art, high comedy, keen insights and irresistible pleasure.