Renee Green’s long-unavailable homage to (and parody of) the historically male-dominated genre of the road novel

Originally published in 1994, Camino Road is the debut novel of acclaimed New York-based artist and writer Renee Green (born 1959). Set between the late 1970s and early 1980s, and combining the genres of road novel, countercultural memoir, travel journal, epistolary novel and screenplay, it is the record of the mind of a young woman coming of age as an artist, traveling in Mexico and exploring the bohemian milieu of 1980s New York.

Serving as both homage to and parody of the historically male-dominated genre of the road novel, Camino Road interrogates the tropes of the form through the unusual perspective of a young woman. The relationship of language to self-formation is demonstrated by the protagonist Lyn’s attempts to learn Spanish. Accordingly, the book is divided into an English half and a Spanish half.

Published as an artist’s book for the Reina Sofia group exhibition The Raw and the Uncooked, the book includes an appendix with photographs and ephemera from Madrid’s 1980s movida punk movement.