HT reviewer Prahlad Srihari picks his favourite read of 2024

A challenging marvel of a novel that works inquiries into the nature of charisma and the gap between ideology and reality into a high-stakes espionage plot

Going back to James Baldwin in August around the time of his birth centenary was one of the best decisions I made this year. Reading Giovanni’s Room for the second time didn’t soften the powerful punch to the gut his prose tends to pack. I was also grateful to be reintroduced to The Devil Finds Work as it renewed my admiration for him as a film critic. Racing through Jeff VanderMeer’s hallucinatory Southern Reach novels ahead of Absolution was also intensely rewarding in its own way. Returning to Area X a decade later knocked the breath out of me yet again. Absolution is just as hauntingly lyrical and dementedly brilliant as the books that came before. But if I had to pick my most interesting read of 2024, it would have to be Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner, a challenging, thrilling, uncompromising marvel of a novel. Which is really saying something after her previous bangers – 2018’s The Mars Room and 2013’s The Flamethrowers. This time, our narrator is a 34-year-old American agent-provocateur for hire. Current alias: Sadie Smith. Her mission: to infiltrate an eco-anarchist collective, called Le Moulin, in a remote corner of south western France and lure them into an act of violence that sabotages their efforts, so that the shadowy corporate and state interests she represents can siphon all the local groundwater into their “megabasins” and monocrop farms.

Of espionage and eco-anarchism: “Expansive though the novel may be, the writing remains nimble. Words hum with possibilities and a deadpan cool.” (Vintage)

Reviewer Prahlad Srihari (Courtesy the subject)

Acting as a spiritual guru to the Moulinards is a man named Bruno Lacombe, once a leftist revolutionary and a Guy Debord ally, now a cave-dwelling philosopher who contends the Neanderthals (“Thals,” as he calls them) were, in fact, superior to Homo sapiens. The path forward, he believes, lies not in revolution, but in a return to our primitive roots. As Sadie intercepts Bruno’s rambling emails, she finds herself drawn to his ideas. Despite her world-weary cynicism, even she can’t pretend not to be unswayed by his charms. Kushner works in inquiries into the nature of charisma, the gap between ideology and reality, and “the four a.m. reality of being”, in a high-stakes espionage plot. Expansive though the novel may be, the writing remains nimble. Words hum with possibilities and a deadpan cool. Sentences court us, asking to be read and re-read. Surrender to Kushner’s lush prose and let your mind spin with the complexities of this richly conceived work of fiction.

Prahlad Srihari is a film and pop culture writer. He lives in Bangalore.