**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 Carré' OBSERVERSeductive 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*