Rachel Kushner’s latest, Creation Lake, has been called a spy novel. Shadowy corporate interests have enlisted the operative (alias: Sadie Smith) to safeguard the construction of a megabasin designed to divert local water to industrial monocroppers. In the tradition of honey-trap saboteurs infiltrating radical movements, Sadie seduces targets close to the anarcho-subsistence farmers fighting to preserve sustainable agrarian life in the region. A femme fatale functionary of corporate greed, Sadie is resolutely blank. For her marks, she feels only contempt.
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