Intro

Rachel Kushner's new novel, Creation Lake, has all the makings of a great spy thriller: a cool and unknowable secret agent, a mysterious figure who communicates only by email and a radical commune of French eco-activists. Kushner has said that some of these elements were, in fact, inspired by real-world stories of espionage and her own access to the social and political worlds of activist communes. In today's episode, Kushner speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about the murky boundaries of being an undercover agent–and a writer.

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