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 Francea 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 bumpmaking 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 contactsshadowy figures in business and governmentinstruct. 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 shes 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 Kushners rendition of noir is taut and dazzling. Creation Lake is Kushners finest achievement yeta work of high art, high comedy, and unforgettable pleasure.

Paperback | 416 pages | 5.25″ x 8.00″