God of Speed
by Luke Davies
A vividly imagined and riveting portrait of one of the twentieth century's most extraordinary characters - aviator, film-maker, and billionaire, Howard Hughes.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.It's a summer night in 1973, and holed up in his hotel penthouse in London, Howard 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 the 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, yearning - 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...