Note from Booksmith staff (9/1): Due to demand, we're ending advanced online sales. If you have not RSVP'd in advance, we'll have space available at the door on the day of the event on a first come, first served basis. We recommend showing up at 6:45 and checking with the staffer at the door about capacity. Thank you and we love you!

Booksmith is honored to be welcoming Rachel Kushner back to the shop for the release of Creation Lake. She will be joined in conversation by author Caille Milner. Please join us and RSVP below!

*RSVP is not required, but greatly assists us in planning the event. There will always be space at the door on the night of on a first-come, first-served basis, however, it may be standing room.*

About the book

From Rachel Kushner, a Booker Prize finalist, two-time National Book Award finalist, and “one of the most gifted authors of her generation” (The New York Times Book Review), comes a new novel about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France—a propulsive page-turner of glittering insights and dark humor.

Creation Lake is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics, bold opinions, and clean beauty, who is sent to do dirty work in France.

“Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader.

Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct. First, these contacts want her to incite provocation. Then they want more.

In this region of centuries-old farms and ancient caves, Sadie becomes entranced by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe, a mentor to the young activists who communicates only by email. Bruno believes that the path to emancipation from what ails modern life is not revolt, but a return to the ancient past.

Just as Sadie 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.

Written in short, vaulting sections, Rachel Kushner’s rendition of “noir” is taut and dazzling. Creation Lake is Kushner’s finest achievement yet as a novelist, a work of high art, high comedy, and unforgettable pleasure.

About the author

Rachel Kushner is the author of 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 Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Folio Prize, and was twice a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. Her books are translated into twenty-seven languages.

Caille Millner is the author of The Golden Road: Notes on my Gentrification (Penguin Press). Her fiction has appeared in Zyzzyva, The Southern Review, and Best American Short Stories 2016. Her essays have been in The Sun Magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. Her writing has been listed in Best American Mystery and Suspense 2020 and Best American Essays 2017. Her awards include the Barnes and Noble Emerging Writers Award.

About the bookstore

The Booksmith is an independent bookstore located in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco since 1976.

Please note:

• Masks are not required, but can be provided upon request.
• Check-in begins at 6:45. Unclaimed seats are given up beginning at 7:10.
• Please be aware of the ticket tier you are selecting. The free general admission tier does not guarantee a seat and may be standing room if our seated tiers sell out first.
• There will be a 30 minute post-show signing as time allows. Books will be for sale on the night of the event, but you can also purchase additional copies straight from our website.
• Questions? Accessibility requests? Write to us at [email protected].