Seductive and cunning American spy-for-hire Sadie Smith has been sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France.
Her mission: to infiltrate a commune of radical eco-activists influenced by the beliefs of an enigmatic elder, Bruno Lacombe, who has rejected civilisation, lives in a Neanderthal cave, and believes the path to enlightenment is a return to primitivism.
Sadie casts her cynical eye over this region of ancient farms and sleepy villages, and finds Bruno’s idealism laughable, but just as she is certain she’s the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story.
Rachel Kushner’s debut novel, Telex from Cuba, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and a New York Times bestseller. Her follow-up novel, The Flamethrowers, was also a finalist for the National Book Award and received rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s and the Paris Review. She lives in Los Angeles.
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**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024**
**INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**
'Imagine Slow Horses’ Jackson Lamb in the body of Jodie Comer’s character in Killing Eve' SUNDAY TIMES
'Compulsively readable... Kill Bill written by John le Carré' OBSERVER
Beneath this a taut, dazzling story of espionage and intrigue lies one of a woman caught in the crossfire between the past and the future, and a profound treatise on human history.
'The most exciting writer of her generation' BRET EASTON ELLIS
'Reinvents the spy novel in one cool, erudite gesture' HERNAN DIAZ
Kushner is a young master. I honestly don't know how she is able to know so much and convey all of this in such a completely entertaining and mesmerising way -- George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo
As I read Creation Lake, I was amazed that Kushner was pulling off such a feat. I kept thinking, 'this can’t possibly work’ and yet it kept working. I was completely immersed and mesmerized. It’s a highly plotted fast-paced noir and yet full of ideas and depth. I've never read anything like it. Rachel Kushner is the most exciting writer of her generation -- Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho
A thrilling and prodigious novelist -- Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom
Wild and brilliantly… Think Kill Bill written by John le Carré: smart, funny and compulsively readable ― Observer
Creation Lake reinvents the spy novel in one cool, erudite gesture. Only Rachel Kushner could weave environmental activism, paranoia, and nihilism into a gripping philosophical thriller. Enthralling and sleekly devious, this book is also a lyrical reflection on both the origin and the fate of our species. A novel this brilliant and profound shouldn’t be this much fun -- Hernan Diaz, author of Trust
Kushner is one of America's greatest living authors ― Daily Telegraph
A big novel, in the best old-fashioned sense: raucous and intricate, verbose and laconic, intimate and cosmopolitan, full of weird wisdom and lightly-worn learning - oh, and it's funny, too -- John Banville, author of The Sea
