An extract from Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
A woman is caught in the crossfire between the past and the future in this part-spy novel, part-profound treatise on human history
A woman is caught in the crossfire between the past and the future in this part-spy novel, part-profound treatise on human history
Sadie Smith – a 34-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 led by the charismatic svengali Bruno Lacombe.
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.
A work of high art, high comedy, and irresistible pleasure, from the author of the Booker Prize-nominated The Mars Room.
Creation Lake was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.
Rachel Kushner
About the Author
Rachel Kushner an internationally bestselling author whose work has been translated into 27 languagesRachel Kushner on Creation Lake
‘I had long wanted to tell a story about a group of young people who decamp from Paris to a rural outpost in France, where they are set on a collision course with the French state. At the same time, I became interested in prehistory, both what can be known about ancient people and what the longing to know actually is, a sense that we have taken a wrong turn, that our ancestors hid messages from us that we don’t know how to read. Why now? Every day is a better time than the day before to ask where we are going and where we have been.’
Read the full interview here.
What the judges said
‘Sadie Smith – not her real name – is an FBI agent turned spy-for-hire, whose latest mission is to infiltrate a commune of eco-activists in rural France. She’s an extraordinary creation: sharp-minded, iron-willed, accustomed to moving fast and breaking things. As she investigates the group, she hacks into emails from their guru, a shadowy eccentric who has withdrawn from modernity into the ancient caves that dot the landscape; he has some beguiling ideas about the role of Neanderthals through history. What’s so electrifying about this novel is the way it knits contemporary politics and power with a deep counter-history of human civilisation. We found the prose thrilling, the ideas exciting, the book as a whole a profound and irresistible page-turner.’
The Booker Prize 2024 judges with the longlist
©Tom PilstonA 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 2024 judges on Creation Lake
Other nominated books by Rachel Kushner
Rachel Kushner combines a gritty portrait of life on the margins of contemporary America with a stinging indictment of the US penal system.
