Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024. Sadie Smith, a thirty-four-year-old American undercover agent of ruthless tactics and bold opinions, is sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France. Her mission, to infiltrate a commune of radical eco-activists influenced by the beliefs of an enigmatic elder, Bruno Lacombe, who has rejected civilisation, lives in a Neanderthal cave, and believes the path to enlightenment is a return to primitivism. Sadie casts her cynical eye over this region of ancient farms and sleepy villages, and finds Bruno’s idealism laughable, but just as she 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. Beneath this taut, dazzling story about a woman caught in the crossfire between the past and the future lies a profound treatise on human history.
