Rachel Kushner with Michelle Richmond

Rachel Kushner is a Booker Prize finalist, two-time National Book Award finalist, and “one of the most gifted authors of her generation” (The New York Times Book Review). Her latest novel, Creation Lake, is about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France. A propulsive page-turner of glittering insights and dark humor, Creation Lake has been longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize.

Sadie Smith is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to us. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie 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 centuries-old farms and ancient caves, Sadie becomes entranced by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe, a mentor to the young activists who communicates only by email. Bruno believes that the path to emancipation from what ails modern life 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, she finds herself seduced by Lacombe’s ingenious counter-histories, artful laments, and his own tragic story.

Written in short, vaulting sections, Rachel Kushner’s rendition of noir is taut and dazzling. Creation Lake is an ace novelist’s finest achievement yet: a work of high art, high comedy, and unforgettable pleasure.

About the Author

Rachel Kushner is the author of The Hard Crowd, her acclaimed essay collection, and the internationally bestselling novels The Mars Room, The Flamethrowers, and Telex from Cuba, as well as a book of short stories, The Strange Case of Rachel K. She has won the Prix Médicis and been a finalist for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Folio Prize, and was twice a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. Her books have been translated into twenty-seven languages.

About the Moderator 

Michelle Richmond is the New York Times bestselling author of eight novels and story collections including The Wonder Test, The Marriage Pact, and The Year of Fog. Her books have been published in thirty-one languages. She is the founder and publisher of Fiction Attic Press. You can find her online at michellerichmond.com.

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Host or Publisher Kepler's Literary Foundation