
God of Speed
Luke Davies(Author)
Rare Bird Books (Publisher)
Published on 4. September 2014
Book
Paperback/Softback
275 pages
978-1-940207-27-8 (ISBN)
Description
"I will fly at last. I will unfold my wings. I will unpack my head. I will step back outside. One day I may even make love again. But one thing at a time. Let's not get ahead of ourselves." Film mogul, aviator, addict, inventor, visionary, recluse, serial womanizer, political meddler: Howard Hughes was one of the strangest and most significant figures of the twentieth century. His obsessive-compulsive disorder would end up crippling and isolating him; in the end he self-medicated his way into oblivion. It's a summer night in 1973, and holed up in his hotel penthouse in London, Hughes can't sleep. Tomorrow he takes control of an airplane for the first time in more than fifteen years. As the reclusive, drug-addled billionaire waits for dawn, the shape and preoccupations of the times emerge from his ruined psyche; a world of oil, flight, money, movies, drugs, sex, power, greed, fear, and yearning for America. Blackly funny, muscular and rhythmic, transcendent and debauched, God of Speed is a fever dream, a giant and extraordinary leap of the imagination into the fractured mind of a man who was both great and greatly fallen.
Reviews / Votes
"...God Of Speed cements Davies where he deserves to be, among the very top echelon of our novelists."-Sydney Morning Herald
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
California
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Weight
383 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-940207-27-8 (9781940207278)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Luke Davies is the author of two novels, Isabelle the Navigator and the cult bestseller Candy, which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards and has been published in Britain and the United States and translated into German, Spanish, Hebrew, French, and Greek. A film version starring Heath Ledger was released in 2006 and won Davies Best Adapted Screenplay at the AFI Awards. Davies was awarded the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal for Poetry in 2004. He has published seven books of poetry, including Running With Light which was the winner of the Judith Wright Poetry Prize, and Totem, which won the John Bray Poetry Prize and The Age Book of The Year Award. Interferon Psalms won the inaugural Prime Minister's Literary Award for Poetry. Davies lives in Los Angeles.