ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF 2024
One of the London Times's Nine Best Literary Nonfiction Books of the Year
"Extraordinary . . . Absolutely gripping." --Chris Power, The Guardian
"Moving and masterful . . . [A] magnificent book." --Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post
A moving, hard-hitting account of the Paris attacks trial by France's leading nonfiction writer.
Nearly every day for ten months, from September 2021 to June 2022, life on the Île de la Cité in central Paris came to a standstill. The most expensive and complex trial in French history--featuring twenty men accused of involvement in the 2015 attacks on the Bataclan and other sites across Paris--was underway. More than three hundred lawyers represented thousands of victims and the accused, all of whom were given the chance to testify. The case ran to more than a million pages. And, nearly every day for ten months, Emmanuel Carrère showed his press pass, walked through a metal detector, and took a seat in a windowless courtroom to bear witness.
V13 isn't so much the story of a trial but of the community that formed around it--a city within the city, home to the innocent and the accused, the forgiving and the vengeful, the outspoken and the silent. Carrère introduces us to lawyers, survivors, family members, and above all the defendants, assembling in painstaking detail a human portrait of the crime. What emerges from these pages is a study of good and evil--and a philosophical journey through the borderlands between the two. Not since Eichmann in Jerusalem has there been a book of this scope and ambition.
About the Author :
Emmanuel Carrère, novelist, filmmaker, journalist, and biographer, is the award-winning, internationally renowned author of Yoga, 97,196 Words, The Adversary, Lives Other Than My Own, and My Life as a Russian Novel, among other books. He lives in Paris.
John Lambert has translated Monsieur, Reticence, and Self-Portrait Abroad by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, as well as Emmanuel Carrère's Limonov, The Kingdom, and 97,196 Words. He lives in South Korea.
Review :
"Moving and masterful . . . [A] magnificent book . . . I wept many times reading V13 . . . Carrère commits everything to the page, omitting nothing, however unbearable. After 10 months, he is left with what he describes as "a unique experience of horror, pity, proximity and presence." So, too, is everyone fortunate enough to read his extraordinary and generous book." --Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post
"The challenge posed by a trial as inherently dramatic as V13 isn't how to render it interesting, but how to traverse its morass of detail and sometimes contradictory defense testimony. The skill with which [Carrère] does so is extraordinary. In Carrère's hands it becomes a lattice of absorbing storylines . . . Carrère is ever alive to striking details . . . Absolutely gripping." --Chris Power, The Guardian
"To wonder aloud how something will affect him is a classic Carrèrian gambit: candid, tantalizing, rhetorically risky . . . [But] Carrère has always used his interest in himself to get closer to others. His insistent "I" is intimate, not imperial . . . [He] recognizes that the testimonies amount to something immense and extraordinary." --Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review
"[Carrère is] a master of literary nonfiction . . . Extraordinary . . . Carrère writes with compassion and curiosity. He does not excuse, moralize, or forgive but offers rich human sketches . . . Gripping." --Rachel Donadio, The New York Review of Books
"It is hard to imagine a book emerging that will manage to be more informative, moving or likely to last than Emmanuel Carrère's V13." --Thomas P. Lambert, The Spectator
"V13 is a brutal, beautiful work, especially adept at raising hard questions." --Tunku Varadarajan, The Wall Street Journal
"Carrère treats the whole massive, complicated, high-stakes trial like one organism drawing breath . . . Profound . . . Lively and often devastating . . . An exceptional response to such horror." --Cora Currier, The New Republic
"Magisterial . . . Intellectual and humane . . . A powerful approach." --Flora Bowen, The Telegraph (5/5 stars)
"At many moments in V13, the experience is that of watching a master magician, wondering how he might possibly pull off his next act. How, one wonders, will Carrère bring us through so much terror and suffering, make meaning out of misery, and wring coherence from the incomprehensible? In V13's superb final third, Carrère deftly pulls the pieces together. His prose is poignant without pretension, and his wit makes him a wonderful companion . . . Audacious . . . In this moving, provocative account, Carrère rises to his own challenge." --Michael Shorris, The Brooklyn Rail
"A deep strand of empathy runs through [Carrère's] writing . . . Carrère's sensitivity and eye for telling, pathetic detail are on display throughout this collection . . . He [brings] a novelistic technique to bear on his reporting." --Russell Williams, Times Literary Supplement
"V13 holds a special place . . . Carrère's pared-down, forensic style reflects this fine balancing act between ordering facts and spinning them into a narrative . . . Carrère's account adds to the commemorative dimension of the trial, its elegant prose bringing back to life those who died, often through an unexpected detail. When it attends to the victims' suffering, the strength and humanity Carrère brings out makes for a reading experience that is at once humbling and invigorating." --Henriette Korthals Altes, The Observer
"Carrère's icy, disclosing style is a marvel. In V13 it works again . . . Carrère convinces us that good is not just morally better than evil. Good is actually more interesting than evil, and a harder philosophical problem to solve." --Will Lloyd, The Times (London)
"[A] compelling mix of dramatic reconstruction, psychological deliberation and personal reflection. Carrère [. . .] looks horror in the eye." --The Economist
"Carrère's retelling of these events, factual and cool-headed as it can be, is not for the faint...Reading his probing, reflective account of this horror, I thought of Norman Mailer's brilliant pivots to nonfiction." --The American Scholar
"Carrère delivers a clear-eyed and soul-searching portrait of the nine-month trial . . . The mystery of [defendant Salah] Abdeslam's conscience fuels much of the meditative narrative, but the book never favors a single protagonist, effectively mirroring the spirit of justice in its willingness to weigh all sides. It's an unforgettable journey through the abyss." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Carrère offers a penetrating account of how France dealt with a mass murder . . . An invaluable look into another nation's response to terrorism." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"An important act of witness, both to the pursuit of justice and to the losses the court proceedings were unable to rectify." --Booklist (starred review)
"Forensic and troubling, deeply humane, utterly gripping, a book of singular importance for our times, on law as story and life, superbly rendered for the reader in English." --Philippe Sands, author of East West Street and The Last Colony
"Emmanuelle Carrère has written what will surely be remembered as a classic account of the Paris attacks trial, one that is rigorous and admirably self-effacing. Yet as heartbreaking as V13 is, Carrère never succumbs to despair, or to a seductive pessimism about France's future: his book is an affirmation of life, of survival, of the bonds of community and solidarity that allow us to rebuild in the aftermath of shattering violence." --Adam Shatz, author of The Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon
"Brilliant. Clear-eyed, wise, humane and utterly compelling." --Paul Murray, author of The Bee Sting
"Impelled by a tolerant mind's desire to confront the intolerable, packed with humane insight and indelible detail, V13 is an utterly riveting account of one of contemporary Europe's darkest nights-and its anguished aftermath-by a French literary colossus." --Rob Doyle, author of Autobibliography
