Emma recommends... BOOKER PRIZE 2024 SHORTLISTED | Creation Lake - Rachel Kushner

Emma recommends... Thoroughly 21st century and completely satisfying spy drama full of ideas around prehistory, modern farming, the ethics of surveillance, and radical politics. Kushner is VERY funny but also deadly serious, and the slow drip of plot and backstory builds a deluge of an ending that is both hilarious and shocking in equal measure.

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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.