Creation Lake (2024), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, is American author Rachel Kushner’s fourth novel. It follows Telex From Cuba (2008), which was shortlisted for the National Book Award; The Flamethrowers (2013), which was shortlisted for both the National Book Award and the Women’s Prize for Fiction; and The Mars Room (2018), which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Creation Lake, like much of Kushner’s work, is attuned to the complexities of gender politics and features a strong, female protagonist. It describes a set of events that unfold as spy-for-hire Sadie Smith investigates and attempts to entrap a group of radical leftist eco-terrorists as they combat industrialized agriculture in rural France. In part a literary spy thriller, it examines the ethics of espionage, revealing its protagonist’s moral relativism and willingness to use and manipulate people in order to achieve her goals. However, Kushner also uses the history of the French Left to interrogate the interplay between history and modernity and to explore the deep social and environmental harms of commercial agriculture and the global shift toward large-scale, industrialized farming.

This guide refers to the 2024 hardcover edition published by Scribner (Simon & Schuster).

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss and depict death and substance use disorder. This guide also mentions death by suicide.

Plot Summary

As the novel opens, protagonist and narrator Sadie Smith is investigating a commune of possible eco-terrorists in Guyenne, France. Once employed by the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), Sadie was fired after one of the targets she investigated was acquitted due to her illegal investigation tactics. She now contracts with various private security firms in Europe, where her reputation for entrapping her targets is seen as a benefit rather than a liability. The leader of the commune, Pascal Balmy, is a well-known leftist ideologue, and Sadie begins her investigation by reading emails sent back and forth between Pascal and Bruno Lacombe, a reclusive “anti-civver,” or anti-civilization activist, who serves as a mentor to the Moulinards, Pascal’s group.

Bruno, who lives alone in a vast network of caves on a rural property near the commune, has a deep fascination with Neanderthal history and culture, and he long ago decided that anti-capitalist action was no longer possible. Now, he argues that individuals should withdraw from contemporary society entirely and model their own small communities on those of Neanderthals. The exchanges between Bruno and Pascal are of particular interest to Sadie because Pascal’s group is suspected of having carried out an act of sabotage on large-scale agricultural equipment in an effort to stop the spread of industrialized agriculture in the region. Sadie’s contact would like proof of Pascal’s guilt and has asked her to infiltrate the Moulinards.

Sadie begins a duplicitous relationship with Lucien, Pascal’s oldest friend, in order to secure a meeting with Pascal. Fluent in multiple languages, Sadie claims to work as a translator, and through Lucien, she negotiates a job translating the Moulinards’ manifestos with Pascal. Lucien’s family has an old stone farmhouse near the Moulinards’ commune, and he arranges for Sadie to stay there while she is working with Pascal and his team of writers. Although wary of outsiders, Pascal and several of his Moulinards warm up to Sadie, and she is able to make inroads with the group.

Sadie’s contacts, who have hired her in no small part because of her history of entrapment, inform her that Platon, a local state official much reviled in the press, will be at an upcoming agricultural fair. They signal that they would like Sadie to engineer an attack on Platon, and they ask her to select a Moulinard whom she deems capable of violence and manipulate him into carrying out the attack. The Moulinards are planning a disruptive action at this event: the release of thousands of liters of milk from local dairy farmers and a human chain blocking the fair’s entrance, trapping fairgoers inside. She lets slip that Platon will be at the event, and she can tell that she has piqued the Moulinards’ interest and that they are tempted to involve him in their plans.

Sadie begins to manipulate one of the Moulinards into staging an attack on Platon while continuing to work on translating their manifesto and secretly reading their email communications with Bruno. She becomes fascinated with Lacombe’s worldview, and although his ideas diverge from Pascal’s in key areas, she is interested in the link between the two men. As the date of the fair approaches, Sadie spends more time on the commune. Although some of the Moulinards resent Sadie’s presence and treat her with obvious mistrust, others are more open to her, and from them, she finds out more about the group.

Shortly before the agricultural fair is to start, Sadie learns that her contacts want Platon “neutralized.” Sadie attempts to convince the Moulinard whom she’d been grooming to attack Platon and shoot him, but the man scoffs at Sadie and refuses. In a dramatic turn of events, another of the Moulinards (a man whom Sadie has heard of but not spoken to) drives his motorcycle around Platon in circles, causing him to panic. Platon runs for cover to a nearby pile of newly felled logs and loses his balance, upending the pile and getting crushed to death in the process. Sadie’s contacts are happy with this result and pay her handsomely. Sadie is, at this point, tired of espionage and worried that her past will come back to haunt her if she continues to take on security work. She buys a car, drives to Spain, and hides out on the coast. She finds herself inspired by everything she read about the relationship between humans and civilization in Bruno’s emails, and she vows to live a more secluded and solitary life.