Creation Lake

Rachel Kushner is the author of the New York Times bestseller Creation Lake, her latest novel; The Hard Crowd, her acclaimed essay collection; and the internationally bestselling novels The Mars Room, The Flamethrowers, and Telex from Cuba, as well as a book of short stories, The Strange Case of Rachel K. She has won the Prix Médicis and been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Folio Prize, and was twice a finalist for the Booker Prize and the National Book Award in Fiction. Creation Lake was also longlisted for the National Book Award. She is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and the recipient of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her books have been translated into twenty-seven languages.

"One of the finest novelists working in the English language." -Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review

"Like Bruno-the-philosopher, Kushner is a dazzling chronicler of end times." -Maureen Corrigan, "Fresh Air"

"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." -Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"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 Neressian, The New York Review of Books

"The two-time National Book Award finalist has once again outdone herself... a flat-out page turner of a spy story, dotted with sex and booze, sarcasm and cynicism, and a heady dose of vital curiosity." -Michelle Kircher, San Francisco Chronicle

"What makes Kushner's work irresistible is her brainy swagger." -Leigh Haber, Boston Globe

"A profound and irresistible page-turner... The prose is thrilling, the ideas electrifying." -The 2024 Booker Prize judges

"Kushner creates a spellbinding story of intrigue and subterfuge that examines the limits of control and moral influence." -Lauren LeBlanc, Los Angeles Times

"A seductive, modish, spy thriller." -Keziah Weir, Vanity Fair

"Extraordinary... full of tension and clarity... riveting..." -Nicolás Medina Mora, The Nation

"Gripping... so fun." -Laura Marsh, The New Republic

"Rich with secrets and dense with vibe, you could say that all of Kushner's novels are spy novels, exposés from someone on the inside. So, what happens when she writes an actual spy novel? Everything you might expect-espionage, intrigue, heart-racing action sequences-and something you might not: an authentic ethical awakening." -Lisa Locascio Nighthawk, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Coolly brilliant and suspenseful... Creation Lake is a class of fiction I have never before found so wonderfully seductive." -Alan Hollinghurst, The 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." -Louise Erdrich

"I was completely immersed and mesmerized. Creation Lake is a highly plotted fast-paced noir and yet full of ideas and depth. Rachel Kushner is the most exciting writer of her generation." -Bret Easton Ellis

"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