“Brain-spinning tale of lies, greed, surveillance, crimes against nature, and ecowarriors…” Booklist Starred Review

Rachel Kushner’s protagonist, Sadie Smith a former U.S. spy and ruthless observer of human behavior, has total faith in her ability to manipulate that behavior. She’s hired to infiltrate an anarchist commune in rural France and stir up trouble. Meanwhile, a radical from an earlier generation is living in a network of caves — a life that Sadie finds increasingly appealing.

Rachel Kushner joins us to talk about Creation Lake and its storyline. She shares insight into the character development of her protagonist, and why Sadie is the opposite of the author. How the story’s structure was inspired by noir fiction, yet Rachel says her book doesn’t exactly follow noir storytelling. And more.

Meet Novelist Rachel Kushner

Rachel Kushner is the author of the novels CREATION LAKE, THE MARS ROOM, THE FLAMETHROWERS, and TELEX FROM CUBA, a book of short stories, THE STRANGE CASE OF RACHEL K, and THE HARD CROWD: ESSAYS 2000-2020. She has won the Prix Médicis and been a finalist for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Folio Prize, the James Tait Black Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace 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. Rachel’s books have been translated into 27 languages. Her fiction has been published in the New Yorker and the Paris Review, and her nonfiction in Harpers and the New York Times Magazine.