(This podcast contains explicit content.) Telex From Cuba, Rachel Kushner’s “multilayered and absorbing” first novel about wealthy Americans in pre-Castro Cuba, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book. Kushner is the recipient of a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship, and was a Visiting Writer to Syracuse University's MFA Program in Creative Writing for the Fall of 2013. Her new novel, The Flamethrowers traces the jagged trajectory of a young woman through the 1970s New York art scene and the Italian underground. The book was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award and a New York Times Top Ten book of 2013. It was on almost every Best Book list of 2013.  

Note: Philipp Meyer had to cancel due to illness.