Rush — Daniel Mason

“Right here. Right now. Tell me: Would you rather live or just exist?” For a man intent on escaping his past, a chance meeting in Vietnam with an American journalist looks like the perfect way out, but it is just the beginning of an adrenaline and testosterone-fueled plunge into a world of danger and desperate men. Dragged into a seedy underground where life is very, very cheap and Russian roulette is an everyday rush, he finds himself taking on the journalist's identity -- and his girlfriend. But soon his new ID gets him in way more trouble than it's worth. The boundaries between reality and hallucination blur and the body count mounts as he's forced to flee to Cambodia and, eventually, to Australia. Rush is a blackly funny and highly charged debut from a brilliant new voice in fiction.