Creation Lake

Kushner is one of America's greatest living authors

Daily Telegraph

Kushner is a young master. I honestly don't know how she is able to know so much and convey all of this in such a completely entertaining and mesmerising way

George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo

A thrilling and prodigious novelist

Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom

Creation Lake reinvents the spy novel in one cool, erudite gesture. Only Rachel Kushner could weave environmental activism, paranoia, and nihilism into a gripping philosophical thriller. Enthralling and sleekly devious, this book is also a lyrical reflection on both the origin and the fate of our species. A novel this brilliant and profound shouldn’t be this much fun

Hernan Diaz, author of Trust

Wild and brilliantly plotted… Think Kill Bill written by John le Carré: smart, funny and compulsively readable

Observer

As I read Creation Lake, I was amazed that Kushner was pulling off such a feat. I kept thinking, 'this can’t possibly work’ and yet it kept working. I was completely immersed and mesmerized. It’s a highly plotted fast-paced noir and yet full of ideas and depth. I've never read anything like it. Rachel Kushner is the most exciting writer of her generation

Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho

A big novel, in the best old-fashioned sense: raucous and intricate, verbose and laconic, intimate and cosmopolitan, full of weird wisdom and lightly-worn learning - oh, and it's funny, too

John Banville, author of The Sea

An immersive novel about an agent provocateur… It’s seductive, entrancing, and quite off the wall

Mick Herron, author of Slough House

A novel of ideas about nothing less than civilisation itself, delivered in the guise of a thriller – the result is profound and wickedly entertaining.

Lisa Allardice, Guardian

At last I get to say how deeply, madly, irrecoverably I loved Creation Lake...it was all stylish and cool, and then somehow the book struck a blow to my heart, which surprised me a lot, because I did not suspect what Rachel Kushner was really up to all along.

Louise Erdrich, Kirkus

Kushner…[is] one of the century’s great American novelists… Her hugely enjoyable new novel…already longlisted for this year’s Booker, ought to put her firmly on the map… amazingly tense: wall-to-wall entertainment, and a real treat

Anthony Cummins, Observer *Book of the Week*

Rachel Kushner may have written the novel of the year... A remarkably original book

Rachel Connolly, The Telegraph

One of the best books of the year... ambitious, intelligent and gripping... an expertly slick thriller... Kushner pulls off a remarkable feat

Philip Womack, Spectator

Questions of control and coercion, reality and idealism, are layered on top of Kushner’s enveloping noir. ‘Sadie’ has a brash confidence and a manner of moving through the world that is aloof in the extreme—disbanding any allegiances or affections before they can create the faintest of tethers. But Kushner’s plot—at once arid and affecting—asks just how much any human can insulate themselves

Vogue

Kushner’s writing is clean, tight and often very funny as she jumps between past and present but never loosens her iron grip on the reader’s attention

Bloomberg

Kushner has proved to be one of America’s most intellectually curious novelists....Creation Lake bears all the hallmarks of her inquisitive mind and creative daring... a spy thriller laced with a killer dose of deadpan wit...Kushner inhabits the spy’s perspective with such eerie finesse that you feel how much fun she’s having...the real covert operative here is Kushner, who’s never felt more cunning than in this novel...vital and profound

The Washington Post

This capacious, brainy, [Booker] longlisted novel is her [Kushner’s] most ambitious yet; it is also her most slyly entertaining… a marvellous creation

Daily Mail

A sensationally enjoyable novel and has deservedly made the Booker prize longlist… [it is] gripping…with perfect dramatic timing

New Scientist

A lively, timely, satisfyingly rough-grained novel of ideas…[with] an excitingly complex and fascinating narrator… Sadie is a triumph of character… the world pours in on her senses, and through hers into ours

Guardian

Creation Lake, embeds big, timely ideas in a ploy that’s propulsive and fun

Mail on Sunday

An electrifying thriller and a profound novel of ideas

Guardian, *Autumn Picks of 2024*

An ambitious story about nihilism, Trojan-horsed into a fun spy thriller

New Statesman

Hugely enjoyable… Creation Lake is a smart, funny novel that dares to contemplate the void of uncertainty where we all stand

Sunday Times, *Book of the Week*

Creation Lake is both smart and funny. It sparks with intellectual vim

Daily Telegraph

A philosophical novel of ideas wrapped up in a spy caper… The prose is thrilling, and the audacious character of "Sadie Smith" – a kind of steely self-willed superwoman, whose veneer begins to crack as the novel goes on – irresistible

Guardian

A dazzling, genre-defying novel, satirical yet profound… Sadie Smith remains an elusive and beguiling secret agent, worthy of a new adventure

Genevieve Gaunt, Spectator

A sinuous and powerfully understated novel…Creation Lake consolidates Kushner’s status as one of the finest novelists working in the English language. You know from this book’s opening paragraphs that you are in the hands of a major writer, one who processes experience on a deep level. Kushner has a gift for almost effortless intellectual penetration

Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review

Using the framework of an espionage novel, Kushner creates a spellbinding story of intrigue and subterfuge that examines the limits of control and moral influence

Lauren LeBlanc, Los Angeles Times

Kushner’s outrageous talent blazes hot throughout the book …Kushner has tapped into something primal, pure, and unforgettable

Leigh Haber, Boston Globe

A dazzling work of fiction: brisk, stylish, funny, moving, and, unexpectedly, piercingly moral…At once terse and vivid, economical and expansive…true, funny, sad, shrewd, and beautifully controlled through each unyielding sentence

Anahid Nersessian, The New York Review of Books

Kushner is as intimidatingly intelligent as this twisty novel’s main character

Emma Alpern, New York Magazine

Extraordinary... full of tension and clarity... riveting... incredibly fun

Nicolás Medina Mora, The Nation

As in a Graham Greene or John le Carre novel, in Creation Lake the point of spying is not just to find out what is happening but how to pick one’s way through a world of ideas... so fun...

Laura Marsh, The New Republic

All the hallmarks of an excellent thriller are here, as are Kushner's gifts for dark humor and stunning prose, to make for an exciting, exhilarating tear through the shadowy underbelly of international espionage—and the very human emotions that can complicate it

Town and Country Magazine

It's suspenseful, extremely smart and brilliantly executed

Jami Attenberg, The Times-Picayune

an intellectual masterpiece ... while also being wildly entertaining

Most Anticipated Books of 2024, Lit Hub

By writing in the unillusioned voice of an ex-FBI agent infiltrating a bunch of rural French subversives, Rachel Kushner has cover to say whatever she damn well pleases. And because Kushner has the most bracing intelligence in American fiction, she rips the skin off what many of us like to think we believe

David Hare

Surprising and delectable… This ecstatic vision of the collective human experience shimmers in stark opposition to the corporate plan to extract and lock up the valley’s groundwater. A brain-spinning tale and searing look at our perilous estrangement from nature

Booklist

An undercover agent embeds with radical French environmentalists in this scintillating story of activism and espionage from Kushner...Most of the narrative is dedicated to the activists’ philosophizing and Sadie’s gimlet-eyed observations, which Kushner magically weaves together...Readers will be captivated

Publishers Weekly

Like Bruno-the-philosopher, Kushner is a dazzling chronicler of end times. The only thing that isn’t disposable in her novels is her own singular voice as a writer

Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air

From [a] thrillerlike premise, Kushner spins a brisk plot that’s equal parts tradecraft and penetrating inquiry into the possibility of radical social change

Laura Miller, Slate

Ambitious, intelligent and gripping... Creation Lake is one of the best books of the year so far

Sarah Jessica Parker