You are about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about what goes into making one.

I'm Sadata Sese, an assistant commissioner of podcasts for BBC Sounds.

I pull a lot of levers to support a diverse range of podcasts on all sorts of subjects,

relationships, identity, comedy, even one that mixes poetry, music and inner city life.

So one day I'll be helping host develop their ideas, the next fact-checking, a feature,

and the next looking at how a podcast connects with its audience, and maybe that's you.

So if you like this podcast, check out some others on BBC Sounds.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

Today, three brilliant writers whose work thinks deeply about the philosophy of art and ideas.

Coming up later, the novelist Sarah Moss on her challenging and creative memoir, My Good Bright Wolf,

and Adam Thirlwell shares his love for his teenage copy of Picasso by Gertrude Stein.

But first, we start with the newly Booker shortlisted Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner.

Kushner is talked about as one of America's most innovative writers.

Her novels gravitate towards

outsider scenes and rebels, whether it's bikers and artists in 1970s New York in the

flame throwers or lifers in a maximum security women's prison in the Mars Room. Creation Lake

centres around undercover Agent for Hire Sadie Smith. She sent a rural France to infiltrate a group of eco-activists

who oppose the creation of a new megabasin. They are followers of the mysterious Bruno Lecombe, a radical

thinker who has traded the outside world for life in an ancient cave system and communicates his

thoughts on prehist and evolution with the activist group

only by email. The result is a story that's part spy thriller, part meditation on where we come

from and where we're going. Welcome Rachel Kushner to Open Book. Thank you so much for having me.

...