The Invisible Mile

In 1928 the Ravat-Wonder squad, cyclists from Australia and New Zealand, were the first riders from the English-speaking world to enter the Tour de France as a team. The novel puts an unnamed young New Zealander among them and follows the race from within the pack: more than 5,000 kilometres of dirt roads ridden on heavy bikes with fixed gears, night stages over mountains in total darkness, crashes and hunger, and pain dulled with cocaine, opium and alcohol. Nobody expects the team to last, but French crowds pack the stadiums for them. The rider's brother returned from flying in the war a broken man and his sister is dead, and as the route turns north into a France still marked by the fighting, the ordeal becomes a reckoning with his family's history and his own guilt.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Historical, War (assigned by AI)

Set in

France, 1928

First published

2015

Author's age

46 when first published

ISBN

9781776560431 (Victoria University Press, New Zealand)

9781609453978 (Europa Editions, United States)

9781509822935 (Picador, United Kingdom)

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Wikidata