Creation Lake
Author(s): Rachel Kushner
Fiction | 2024 Booker Prize Longlist
From Rachel Kushner, Booker Prize finalist and two-time National Book Award finalist, comes a new novel about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France.
A thirty-four-year-old American undercover agent of ruthless tactics, bold opinions and clean beauty is 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 a mysterious elder, Bruno Lacombe, who has rejected civilisation tout court. Sadie casts her cynical eye over this region of ancient farms and sleepy villages, and at first finds Bruno's idealism laughable — he lives in a Neanderthal cave and believes the path to enlightenment is a return to primitivism. But just as Sadie 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.
Beneath this parodic spy novel about a woman caught in the crossfire between the past and the future lies a profound treatise on human history.
Creation Lake is Rachel Kushner's finest achievement yet — a work of high art, high comedy and irresistible pleasure.
Product Information
Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker prize
"A profound and irresistible page-turner about a spy-for-hire who infiltrates a commune of eco-activists in rural France. The prose is thrilling, the ideas electrifying.” —The Booker Prize 2024 judges on Creation Lake
“At last I get to say how deeply, madly, irrecoverably I loved Creation Lake...i t was all stylish and cool, and then somehow the book struck a blow to my heart.” —Louise Erdrich, Kirkus
'Reinvents the spy novel in one cool, erudite gesture' - Hernan Diaz
'Compulsively readable... Kill Bill written by John le Carre' - Sadie Smith, Observer
“A sinuous and powerfully understated novel…Creation Lake consolidates Kushner’s status as one of finest novelists working in the English language. You know from this book’s opening paragraphs that you are in the hands of a major writer, one who processes experience on a deep level. Kushner has a gift for almost effortless intellectual penetration.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review
"Creation Lake bears all the hallmarks of her inquisitive mind and creative daring... a spy thriller laced with a killer dose of deadpan wit... Kushner inhabits the spy’s perspective with such eerie finesse that you feel how much fun she’s having... the real covert operative here is Kushner, who’s never felt more cunning than in this novel about the clashing ideological claims that have left us bereft at the end of time. Bore through this noir posing and wry satire of radical politics, and you feel something vital and profound prowling around in the darkness beneath." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
Ambitious, intelligent and gripping... Creation Lake is one of the best books of the year so far." —The Spectator
“An immersive novel about an agent provocateur embedded within a group of environmental activists in south-western France, and slowly becoming mesmerized by the group elder’s theories about Neanderthals. It’s seductive, entrancing, and quite off the wall.” —Mick Herron, The Guardian
General Fields
- :
- : Random House UK
- : JONATHAN CAPE & BH - TRADE
- : 30 August 2024
- : books
Special Fields
- : Rachel Kushner
- : Paperback
- : 416
