Scribner is thrilled to announce the publication of Rachel Kushner’s new novel, CREATION LAKE. Rachel Kushner is one of the most exhilarating writers working today, one who continually upends our expectations about what a novel can do and can be. She is a national and New York Times bestseller and a Booker Prize finalist who has twice been shortlisted for the National Book Award, and her sublime CREATION LAKE is this dazzling writer at her finest.
Rachel Kushner’s New York Times and Indie Bestseller CREATION LAKE is
“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 2024 Booker Prize judges
From Rachel Kushner, two-time finalist for both the Booker Prize and National Book Award, a “vital” (The Washington Post) and “wickedly entertaining” (The Guardian) novel about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France—a propulsive page-turner filled with dark humor.
Creation Lake is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics and clean beauty who is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to her lover, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian she has met by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone she targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct. First, these contacts want her to incite provocation. Then they want more.
In this region of old farms and prehistoric caves, Sadie becomes entranced by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe, a mentor to the young activists who believes that the path to emancipation is not revolt but a return to the ancient past. Just as Sadie is certain she’s the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story.
Written in short, vaulting sections, Rachel Kushner’s rendition of “noir” is taut and dazzling. Creation Lake is Kushner’s finest achievement yet—a work of high art, high comedy, and unforgettable pleasure.
SYNOPSIS
France, 2013: “Sadie Smith” is an American operative working undercover for mysterious and powerful private interests. She is a dissimulator: smart, ruthlessly effective, and beautiful by design, with a “tasteful” breast augmentation and a daily drinking habit. (This drinking, however, does not diminish her ability to see what most other people fail to see, and do what most other people cannot do.)
Rachel Kushner’s New York Times and Indie Bestseller CREATION LAKE is
*A Finalist for the Booker Prize*
*Longlisted for the National Book Award*
*An Instant New York Times and Indie Bestseller*
*A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice*
*A #1 Indie Next Pick*
“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 2024 Booker Prize judges
From Rachel Kushner, two-time finalist for both the Booker Prize and National Book Award, a “vital” (The Washington Post) and “wickedly entertaining” (The Guardian) novel about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France—a propulsive page-turner filled with dark humor.
Creation Lake is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics and clean beauty who is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to her lover, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian she has met by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone she targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct. First, these contacts want her to incite provocation. Then they want more.
In this region of old farms and prehistoric caves, Sadie becomes entranced by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe, a mentor to the young activists who believes that the path to emancipation is not revolt but a return to the ancient past. Just as Sadie is certain she’s the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story.
Written in short, vaulting sections, Rachel Kushner’s rendition of “noir” is taut and dazzling. Creation Lake is Kushner’s finest achievement yet—a work of high art, high comedy, and unforgettable pleasure.
SYNOPSIS
France, 2013: “Sadie Smith” is an American operative working undercover for mysterious and powerful private interests. She is a dissimulator: smart, ruthlessly effective, and beautiful by design, with a “tasteful” breast augmentation and a daily drinking habit. (This drinking, however, does not diminish her ability to see what most other people fail to see, and do what most other people cannot do.)
The Europe she occupies is deromanticized, a zone of commerce: “truck ruts and panties snagged on a bush: that’s the real Europe.” Sadie has been sent to rural France to surveil, infiltrate and undermine a cagey, possibly subversive anarchist collective. Over the course of her stakeout, she becomes intrigued by Bruno Lacombe, a French philosopher and hero to the younger activists who has left our world and retreated to a massive complex of caves beneath his property. His correspondence with the activists captivates Sadie, offering as it does a glimpse of another world. Sadie is paid – handsomely – to utilize her cruel talents at manipulation to protect wealth and power. But will her entanglements with the collective and Bruno’s seductions threaten her allegiances?
Brilliant on the sentence level and brilliant in its observations, CREATION LAKE is also a total page-turner that subtly and hilariously explores this particular moment of late capitalism. It is an absolute triumph: both serious art and serious fun. In the words of The Guardian, it is both “profound and wickedly entertaining.”
“Surprising and delectable…Kushner’s long fascination with underground rebels and their uprisings attains new depths and resonance in this bravura improvisation on the secret-agent trope; this brain-spinning tale of lies, greed, surveillance, crimes against nature, and ecowarriors; this searing look at our perilous estrangement from nature.”—Booklist, STARRED review
“An undercover agent embeds with radical French environmentalists in this scintillating story of activism and espionage from Kushner...Most of the narrative is dedicated to the activists’ philosophizing and Sadie’s gimlet-eyed observations, which Kushner magically weaves together...Readers will be captivated.”—Publishers Weekly, STARRED review
“Sadie is similar to Kushner’s earlier fictional protagonists—astringent, thrill-seeking, serious, worldly—but here the author has tapped into a more melancholy, contemplative mode that weaves neatly around a spy story….Kushner has captured the internal crisis of ideology that spy yarns often ignore, while creating an engaging tale in its own right. A deft, brainy take on the espionage novel.”—Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review
More Praise for CREATION LAKE:
“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
“By writing in the unillusioned voice of an ex-FBI agent infiltrating a bunch of rural French subversives, Rachel Kushner has cover to say whatever she damn well pleases. And because Kushner has the most bracing intelligence in American fiction, she rips the skin off what many of us like to think we believe.” —David Hare
“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
“Rachel Kushner wrote a secret agent book, and set it in France. What more must we know to anticipate it? Nothing, because no doubt, like nearly everything she writes, it will be an intellectual masterpiece while also reinventing a genre while also being wildly entertaining. That’s kind of her thing.”—Lit Hub, Most Anticipated Books of 2024
“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, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Trust
Brilliant on the sentence level and brilliant in its observations, CREATION LAKE is also a total page-turner that subtly and hilariously explores this particular moment of late capitalism. It is an absolute triumph: both serious art and serious fun. In the words of The Guardian, it is both “profound and wickedly entertaining.”
“Surprising and delectable…Kushner’s long fascination with underground rebels and their uprisings attains new depths and resonance in this bravura improvisation on the secret-agent trope; this brain-spinning tale of lies, greed, surveillance, crimes against nature, and ecowarriors; this searing look at our perilous estrangement from nature.”—Booklist, STARRED review
“An undercover agent embeds with radical French environmentalists in this scintillating story of activism and espionage from Kushner...Most of the narrative is dedicated to the activists’ philosophizing and Sadie’s gimlet-eyed observations, which Kushner magically weaves together...Readers will be captivated.”—Publishers Weekly, STARRED review
“Sadie is similar to Kushner’s earlier fictional protagonists—astringent, thrill-seeking, serious, worldly—but here the author has tapped into a more melancholy, contemplative mode that weaves neatly around a spy story….Kushner has captured the internal crisis of ideology that spy yarns often ignore, while creating an engaging tale in its own right. A deft, brainy take on the espionage novel.”—Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review
More Praise for CREATION LAKE:
“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
“By writing in the unillusioned voice of an ex-FBI agent infiltrating a bunch of rural French subversives, Rachel Kushner has cover to say whatever she damn well pleases. And because Kushner has the most bracing intelligence in American fiction, she rips the skin off what many of us like to think we believe.” —David Hare
“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
“Rachel Kushner wrote a secret agent book, and set it in France. What more must we know to anticipate it? Nothing, because no doubt, like nearly everything she writes, it will be an intellectual masterpiece while also reinventing a genre while also being wildly entertaining. That’s kind of her thing.”—Lit Hub, Most Anticipated Books of 2024
“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, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Trust
