Interview with Rachel Kushner
Creation Lake

Rachel Kushner has produced a remarkable body of work that has drawn quite a lot of attention, placing her among the major practitioners of contemporary American fiction. The daughter of unconventional parents who were part of the Beatnik generation, the author grew up in a highly politicized milieu. This background has influenced and informed her novels, which celebrate rebels, renegades, radicals on the fringe of society. From Fidel Castro’s insurgent army in Telex from Cuba (Scribner, 2008) and the members of Italy’s Red Brigades in The Flamethrowers (Scribner, 2013), to the fellow inmates of a high-security California prison in The Mars Club (Scribner, 2018), free spirits who reject the norms imposed by society are a ubiquitous species throughout the novelist’s work.

In her fourth novel, Creation Lake (Scribner, 2024), Rachel Kushner turns to the world of a community of eco-activists in rural Dordogne, France. A former FBI agent working as a freelance spy, “Sadie Smith” is sent by mysterious but influential persons to infiltrate the collective, which is fighting against over-farming in the region. The shrewd narrator enters the milieu and what she sees there plays out alongside the thoughts of the community’s charismatic leader Pascal Balmy and those of the latter’s mentor, the nihilist ‘60s militant Bruno Lacombe, who lives as a recluse in a cave.

The author uses the form of the spy novel to weave philosophical and historical reflections that are filled with caustic humor. She tackles the question of the devastation caused by the massive industrialization of rural areas by way of various countercultures, slipping into the world of those who flee our world to create their own.