**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024**
**INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**
'Imagine Slow Horses Jackson Lamb in the body of Jodie Comer s character in Killing Eve' SUNDAY TIMES
'Compulsively readable... Kill Bill written by John le Carr ' OBSERVER
Seductive and cunning American spy-for-hire Sadie Smith has been 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 a taut, dazzling story of espionage and intrigue lies one of a woman caught in the crossfire between the past and the future, and a profound treatise on human history.
'The most exciting writer of her generation' BRET EASTON ELLIS
'Reinvents the spy novel in one cool, erudite gesture' HERNAN DIAZ
*A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES, INDEPENDENT, DAILY TELEGRAPH, THE ATLANTIC, GUARDIAN, VULTURE, THE ECONOMIST*
