A few pages and many decades later, it's on a Valera motorcycle that Reno, a young woman from Nevada, races across the saltflats. This is Valera, who goes on to found a motorcycle company. Why had he waited so long? He surged into it." 'It is unknown.'" Soon, he's infiltrated a gang of motorcyclists and is racing through the streets with them: "The night felt like it would burn. "'The world is unknown to me,' he said out loud. When he watches the object of his affections mount this contraption and embrace its rider – "man and bike and Marie making an obscene double-humped centaur's profile" – he feels both sexual betrayal and a dangerous elation. The first is in turn-of-the-century Alexandria, where a teenage boy, libidinous and hungry for initiation into the adult world, sees a motorbike for the first time. It begins with two motorcycle races, on different continents and decades, but each one is a point of ignition for the rest of the book. O ne of the thrills of riding a motorbike is the sensation of being carried by a machine far more powerful than you. This is how Rachel Kushner's exhilarating second novel moves: deftly, and at great velocity, but with power and precision.
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