Join us for an exclusive preview event for Rachel Kushner’s part-spy novel parody, part treatise on human history, Creation Lake, publishing September 2024. In conversation with Adam Biles.

“Reinvents the spy novel in one cool, erudite gesture.” Hernan Diaz

Free & open to all. Places limited. Arrive early to avoid disappointment.

Most events take place on our first floor, which is accessible by stairs. If you have any concerns about access, please don't hesitate to contact us.

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Sadie Smith – a sardonic, strikingly sexy, 30-something American undercover agent of questionable morals – is sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France. Her instructions are to infiltrate a commune of radical eco-activists led by the charismatic svengali Bruno Lacombe and coax them into violent action, provoking the French state to crush them and their dangerous ideas for good.

At first Sadie finds Bruno’s idealism laughable – he lives in a Neanderthal cave and believes the path to enlightenment is a return to primitivism. But over time she falls for his narrative about the futility of civilisation and his promise of a new dawn for humanity. His ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own devastating story, become impossible to turn away from.

Beneath this parodic spy novel about a woman caught in the crossfire between the past and the future lies a profound treatise on human history. Written in short, vaulting sections, Creation Lake is Rachel Kushner’s finest achievement yet as a novelist – a work of high art, high comedy, keen insights and irresistible pleasure.

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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 shortlisted 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. She is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and the recipient of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her books are translated into twenty-seven languages.

Photo © Chloe Aftel