Creation Lake (PB) - B-format

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024, an instant New York Times bestseller, a Book of the Year for The Sunday Times, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, New York Times, Vogue, Independent, and Harper's Bazaar. The seductive and cunning American undercover agent 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 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.