Creation Lake

Nick Day's Review

Nominated for the Booker Prize Longlist.

In Creation Lake, Sadie Smith is our narrator and agent provocateur. Her mission: to infiltrate an obscure eco-Collective in the south-west of France: a group of radicals intent on saving agricultural land from money-hungry developers. Sadie conducts her mission in a transactional manner – she’s practical, remorseless, with an observant, wry wit – but becomes increasingly reflective about her own circumstances.

The novel begins with Sadie reading an intercepted email from Bruno Lacombe, the leader of the Collective. The enigmatic Bruno has chosen a life of simplicity, living in a cave; his wisdom from that interior space guides the Collective. His emails resonate with and twist on ideas put forward from the likes of Noah Harari in Sapiens: the dark secret of Homo Sapiens, namely, the extinction of our neanderthal cousins. The implication is that Homo Sapiens are now a society in decline. The Collective yearns for a return to the past instead of forging a better future. In the process, the novel combines fictional characters with references to historical figures like the iconic French philosopher and film maker Guy Debord, leader of the Marxist Situationist movement in the 60s and 70s. What happened to Debord in real life is mirrored in the novel’s clear-eyed, highly entertaining exploration of revolutionary ideals.

Sadie infiltrates the Collective with vehement contempt, using her lovers and other people remorselessly to further her aims. She plays the various subversives off against each other, flaying them with her satirical inner voice. Through her interactions with the Collective and her reflections on Bruno’s musings, the reader ultimately arrives at a startlingly unexpected conclusion. In the end it is what is left unsaid that makes this novel such a profound and powerful read.

Creation Lake is a brilliant combination of espionage thriller, satire and philosophy. Highly recommend: Rachael Kushner’s nomination for the Booker Longlist is thoroughly deserved. I look forward to seeing how she proceeds as the Booker is cut down to the shortlist on September 16.

Publisher's Review 

From Rachel Kushner comes a new novel about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France.

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.

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.

**LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024**

'The most exciting writer of her generation' - BRET EASTON ELLIS

'Reinvents the spy novel in one cool, erudite gesture' - HERNAN DIAZ

'Compulsively readable... Kill Bill written by John le Carre' - OBSERVER