Chronicle of a Trial

A TIMES, NEW STATESMAN and WASHINGTON POST Book of the Year 
 
'Absolutely gripping' GUARDIAN 
'A marvel' SUNDAY TIMES 
'Magisterial' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 
'Extraordinary and generous' WASHINGTON POST 
'A gripping testimony of terror and loss' OBSERVER 
 
A moving, hard-hitting account of the Paris attacks trial by France’s leading non-fiction writer 
 
On 13 November 2015, nine attackers wearing suicide bombs killed 130 people and left hundreds wounded at sites in and around Paris in the deadliest attack on French soil since the Second World War. V13 was the code name for the much-awaited trial of those who helped to carry out these attacks. Lasting nine months, from September 2021 to June 2022, it consisted of 14 defendants, 2,400 plaintiffs, 350 lawyers and a file 53 metres high. 
 
In V13, Emmanuel Carrère follows this landmark trial from its first day to its last, taking us behind the scenes to the lawyers, survivors, family members and the defendants. He assembles, in painstaking and subtle detail, a human portrait of the crime – a study of good and evil, and the philosophical journey through the borderlands between the two. 
 
Over the course of his career, Emmanuel Carrère has reinvented non-fiction writing. In a search for truth in all its guises, he dispenses with the rules of genre, fusing passion, curiosity and a profoundly humane intellect, making him one of the most distinctive and important literary voices today.

I’ll read anything by Emmanuel Carrère, a roving intellectual with a curious mind . . . A powerful read

Emmanuel Carrère [is] quite possibly France’s best non-fiction writer… [V13 is] a masterpiece

Extraordinary . . . A lattice of absorbing storylines . . . Absolutely gripping

Carrère’s icy, disclosing style is a marvel . . . In this marvellous and terrifying book, 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

Compelling and richly rendered . . . Carrère is one of the most exciting and formally innovative of current non-fiction writers

A gripping testimony of terror and loss . . . the strength and humanity Carrère brings out makes for a reading experience that is at once humbling and invigorating

Magisterial . . . It's a reminder of humanity, and its frailty

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

A curious but compelling mix of dramatic reconstruction, psychological deliberation and personal reflection

Carrère has . . . forged an extremely readable story out of a dizzying amount of information

An affirmation of life, of survival, of the bonds of community and solidarity that allow us to rebuild in the aftermath of shattering violence

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

Not since Hannah Arendt wrote about the trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann has a book laid bare the political and moral scaffolding of our times with such commitment and intelligence

Impelled by a tolerant mind’s desire to confront the intolerable, V13 is an utterly riveting account of one of contemporary Europe’s darkest nights – and its anguished aftermath – by a French literary colossus

V13 is a work of profound moral imagination and inquiry. It is a dazzling book by one of the most extraordinary writers of our time

Brilliant. Clear-eyed, wise and compelling

An unforgettable book, a document of violence and dignity like no other, a work of such humanity and generous contemplation that it functions as a tribute to the value of testimony itself

Compassionate, unexpectedly funny at times, profoundly moving and uplifting, it’s a masterpiece

Emmanuel Carrère is a novelist, journalist, screenwriter and film director. He is the award-winning, internationally renowned author of sixteen books, including V13, Limonov, The Kingdom, 97,196 Words, Yoga and the Sunday Times bestselling The Adversary.

On 13 November 2015, nine attackers wearing suicide bombs killed 130 people and left hundreds wounded at sites in and around Paris in the deadliest attack on French soil since the Second World War. V13 was the code name for the much-awaited trial of those who helped to carry out these attacks. Lasting nine months, from September 2021 to June 2022, it consisted of 14 defendants, 2,400 plaintiffs, 350 lawyers and a file 53 metres high. 
 
In V13, Emmanuel Carrère follows this landmark trial from its first day to its last, taking us behind the scenes to the lawyers, survivors, family members and the defendants. He assembles, in painstaking and subtle detail, a human portrait of the crime – a study of good and evil, and the philosophical journey through the borderlands between the two. 
 
Over the course of his career, Emmanuel Carrère has reinvented non-fiction writing. In a search for truth in all its guises, he dispenses with the rules of genre, fusing passion, curiosity and a profoundly humane intellect, making him one of the most distinctive and important literary voices today.

The Moustache

The most important French writer you've never heard of

There are few great writers in France today, and Emmanuel Carrère is one of them

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE ADVERSARY 
 
One morning, a man shaves off his long-worn moustache, hoping to amuse his wife and friends. But when nobody notices, or pretends not to have noticed, what started out as a simple trick turns to terror. As doubt and denial bristle, and every aspect of his life threatens to topple into madness – a disturbing solution comes into view, taking us on a dramatic flight across the world. 
 
Translated by Lanie Goodman 
 
Elegant novellas-in-translation, VINTAGE EDITIONS celebrate the audacity and ambition of the written word, transporting readers to wherever in the world literary innovation may be found.

Yoga

Completely arresting. He [Carrère] has the talent...of showing us his foibles without demanding that we identify with them.

An exhilarating new work of autofiction... It's wonderful. It is Carrère's willingness to face his own flaws full in the face that makes his writing so striking, and - dare I say it - relatable.

Yoga is the story of how a life can fray, tighten itself into a noose, unravel and, in the process, be built and braided into lines that make up a profound and moving work of art.

A devastating portrait...[Carrère's] singular, ever-expanding work, in which one pain need never obscure another, in which truths and half-truths are held not in opposition but in delicate, precarious balance, is an answer in itself.

I loved Emmanuel Carrère's Yoga... A useful manual for this era, where nothing seems connected but everything's related.

Times Literary Supplement *Books of the Year*

Unlike any book I've ever read... Carrère is anything but ordinary as a talent, but his great and precious gift is to reveal his own mind in such a way that illuminates the infinity that belongs to every human person.

Megan Nolan, author of ACTS OF DESPERATION

[With] relentless clarity of thought and confessional honesty... Yoga is fascinating on the purpose of meditation... [an] extraordinarily compelling account.

Stunning...Yoga is a deeply moving reflection on the painful occupation that is living.

[Carrère's] skill in constructing a narrative from disparate materials is exceptional... [and] relentlessly interesting.

Impressive... reveals itself as a monumental book on the human condition.

How does one harmonise the yin and yang of a life broken in two? Yoga is the implacable tale of a writer lost in his kingdom.

An immensely engaging, lively and exciting writer... [Yoga] is increasIngly hypnotic; lyrical, hypnotic and elegant. There is no doubt that a great intellect is at work, keen to explore the depths of his own troubled mind.

A tender, honest, intelligent portrait of the human condition.

Emmanuel Carrère is a novelist, journalist, screenwriter, and film director. He is the award-winning, internationally renowned author of fifteen books including My Life as a Russian Novel, Limonov, The Kingdom, 97,196 Words, and the Sunday Times bestselling The Adversary. He lives in Paris.

This is a book about yoga. Or at least, it was. 
 
January 2015. High on literary success and familial bliss, Emmanuel Carrère embarks on a rigorous ten-day meditative retreat in rural France in search of clarity and material for his next book, which he thinks will be a subtle, upbeat introduction to yoga. 
 
But his trip is cut short, and he is brought down to earth with a thud when he returns to a Paris in turmoil in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack. From then on, Carrère's life - along with his novel-in-progress - begins to unravel in ever more unexpected ways. 
 
'The story of how a life can fray, tighten itself into a noose, unravel... profound and moving' Geoff Dyer 
 
'Extraordinarily compelling' Financial Times

Essays

97,196 Words

From the bestselling author of The Adversary and 'France's greatest writer of nonfiction' (New York Times), the first collection of Carrère's essays in English.

A superb collection of essays by Emmanuel Carrère, one of the best storytellers around… When Carrère writes a story, he knows how to stir up powerful and conflicting emotions in his reader, which is one of the reasons he’s so good… It’s the best book I’ve read for ages.

Emmanuel Carrère is known for the way he bends and breaks genres… [he] is the most celebrated writer of high-end nonfiction in France… the core of Mr Carrère's talent is precisely that he brings readers into sympathetic contact with others, powerful and powerless, insiders and outsiders… It is a masterful illusion.

Impossible not to fall in love with…Carrere is regarded as a superstar writer… it is a joy to be reminded of all the wonderful things that [creative non-fiction] can do.

Emmanuel Carrère, a man fascinated by crime, eroticism and the oddities of human behaviour, is arguably France’s most original living writer of non-fiction… he creates reportage, that, with its insight and humanity, is closer to literature than journalism.

A page-turner and a mainstream bestseller in France…Carrère is without doubt extremely crafty… He writes non-fiction as if it were fiction… Gripping essays.

97,196 Words is that unlikely thing: a perfect introduction for those who are unfamiliar with the brilliant, constantly unsettling world of Carrère’s work and a welcome treat for those of us who are already uncomfortably (and therefore happily) settled there.

Carrère’s transparency about his approach is what sets him apart… In his native France it is precisely because his non-fiction exudes an erudite intimacy and lack of obfuscation that he is hailed as a writer who can be compared with Montaigne.

The French polymath writes in a brilliantly unsettling manner, skipping genre from memoir to theological tract.

Read the definitive essay collection from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Adversary, dubbed 'France's greatest writer of non-fiction' (New York Times) 
 
'The most exciting living writer' Karl Ove Knausgaard 
 
Over the course of his career, Emmanuel Carrère has reinvented non-fiction writing. In a search for truth in all its guises, he dispenses with the rules of genre. For him, no form is out of reach: theology, historiography, reportage and memoir - among many others - are fused under the pressure of an inimitable combination of passion, curiosity and intellect that has made Carrère one of our most distinctive and important literary voices today. 
 
97,196 Words introduces Carrère's shorter work to an English-language audience. Featuring more than thirty extraordinary texts written over an illustrious twenty-five-year period of Carrère's creative life, the book shows a remarkable mind at work. Spanning continents, histories, and personal relationships, 97,196 Words considers the divides between truth, reality and our shared humanity, exploring remarkable events and eccentric lives, including Carrère's own. 
 
* A New York Times Notable Book *

Class Trip

Elegant, pocket-sized paperbacks, VINTAGE Editions celebrate the audacity and ambition of the written word, transporting readers to wherever in the world literary innovation may be found.

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE ADVERSARY 
 
Little Nicolas is a delicate, timid schoolboy, with an excitable, if morbid imagination – the child of an overbearing father. So, two weeks away on the class trip is already enough to fill him with dread. But when a child goes missing, Nicolas’ mind turns to gruesome possibilities, impelling him to take up the role of detective – and edge closer to a truth more shocking than Nicolas’ worst fears. 
 
Translated by Linda Coverdale 
 
'There are few great writers in France today, and Emmanuel Carrère is one of them' Paris Review 
 
Elegant, pocket-sized paperbacks, VINTAGE Editions celebrate the audacity and ambition of the written word, transporting readers to wherever in the world literary innovation may be found.

Other Lives But Mine

From the bestselling author of The Adversary, an expansive meditation on death, grief and the limtless reach of the human spirit

Read this an expansive meditation on death, grief and the limtless reach of the human spirit from the bestselling author of The Adversary 
 
 ‘Compelling… Carrère has the gift of speaking simply and directly of the essentials’ Evening Standard 
 
 Beset by arguments and the fear that things between them may be falling apart, writer Emmanuel Carrère and his partner, Hélène, journey to Sri Lanka to spend Christmas along the coast. But when the 2004 tsunami devastates the country, sweeping their friends’ young daughter away, the couple are bound in their search among the dead. As further tragedy strikes back home, with the news that Hélène’s sister is dying of cancer, Carrère turns his characteristic eye to the subject of these two lives, documenting the dramatic effect that their deaths have on those around them. 
 
 Precise, sober, and suspenseful, Other Lives But Mine offers an intimate portrait of the fragility of life and the restorative processes of grief, that illuminates the astonishing richness of human connection.

The Kingdom

'This is a brilliant, shocking book ... also witty, painfully self-critical and humane ... it is a work of great literature' Tim Whitmarsh, Guardian 
 
'The Kingdom, already a huge bestseller in France, is thrilling, magnificent and strange' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times 
 
The sensational international bestseller from one of France's most fêted writers - an epic novel telling the story of Christianity as it has never been told before, and one man's crisis of faith. 
 
Corinth, ancient Greece, two thousand years ago. An itinerant preacher, poor, wracked by illness, tells the story of a prophet who was crucified in Judea, who came back from the dead, and whose return is a sign of something enormous. Like a contagion, the story will spread over the city, the country and, eventually, the world. Emmanuel Carrère's astonishing historical epic tells the story of the mysterious beginnings of Christianity, bringing to life a distant, primeval past of strange sects, apocalyptic beliefs and political turmoil. In doing so Carrère, once himself a fervent believer, questions his own faith, asks why we believe in resurrection, and what it means. The Kingdom is his masterpiece. 
 
'An utterly brilliant book' Catherine Nixey, The Times

Brilliant, shocking... also witty, painfully self-critical and humane... it is a work of great literature

Emmanuel Carrère is said by many to be one of the best writers in France, if not Europe... The Kingdom, a huge bestseller in France, is thrilling, magnificent and strange

An utterly brilliant book... Carrère is a vivid guide and a knowledgeable one

A novelised memoir that vividly captures the drama of the Christian experience... A celebration of religious imagination - Catholic, French, Judaic, Hellenic - The Kingdom has been a runaway bestseller in France. In Britain, it may succeed as a relief and an antidote

Corinth, ancient Greece, two thousand years ago. An itinerant preacher, poor, wracked by illness, tells the story of a prophet who was crucified in Judea, who came back from the dead, and whose return is a sign of something enormous. Like a contagion, the story will spread over the city, the country and, eventually, the world. Emmanuel Carrère's astonishing historical epic tells the story of the mysterious beginnings of Christianity, bringing to life a distant, primeval past of strange sects, apocalyptic beliefs and political turmoil. In doing so Carrère, once himself a fervent believer, questions his own faith, asks why we believe in resurrection, and what it means. The Kingdom is his masterpiece.

My Life as a Russian Novel

Road trip, confession and erotic tour de force My Life as a Russian Novel is a coruscating non-fiction novel from the Sunday Times-bestselling, critically acclaimed author of The Adversary

An elegant, emotional self-examination, full of bleak but truthful insights about the lies and compromises of love

This book is very much at the crossroads of writing-as-therapy and the sort of fact-fiction blurring that fans of WG Sebald and Geoff Dyer will appreciate

Carrère brings the whole to sharp focus with a few jarring truths and a moment of great beauty. You leave its last pages with a deep appreciation for life

Emmanuel Carrère has written a work of infinite sorrow, infernal jealousy, and violent passion. My Life as a Russian Novel dazzles

Brims with ideas and incidents... Gripping and fascinating, an intimate portrait of a complicated man's inner life and his struggles to find some kind of happiness and fulfilment

A captivating memoir that reads like a literary erotic-suspense novel

As a writer, Carrère is straight berserk; as a storyteller he is so freakishly talented, so unassuming in grace and power that you only realize the hold he's got on your when you attempt to pull away

He's the best kind of writer, not just a bestseller but a man who is not afraid to leave the comfort zone of his desk, go out into the world, take risks, and get his shoes dirty

‘As a writer, Carrère is straight berserk’ Junot Díaz 
 
In this non-fiction novel – road trip, confession, and erotic tour de force – Emmanuel Carrère pursues two consuming obsessions: the disappearance of his grandfather amid suspicions that he was a Nazi collaborator in the Second World War; and a violently passionate affair with a woman that he loves but which ends in destruction. Moving between Paris and Kotelnich, a grisly post-Soviet town, Carrère weaves his story into a travelogue of a journey inward, travelling fearlessly into the depths of his tortured psyche.

A True Story of Monstrous Deception

The Adversary

A true story of monstrous deception, from France's greatest living writer – 'The story told here is beyond the imagination of even the best crime writer' Sunday Times

A disturbing look at the dark side of human nature that is powerfully written and beautifully told

The story told here is truly beyond the imagination for even the best crime writer

The mesmerizing true crime tale of an apparently ordinary man whose life mutates in the space of a few blood-splattering hours from the realm of Renoir to that of Stephen King

He’s the best kind of writer, not just a bestseller but a man who is not afraid to leave the comfort zone of his desk, go out into the world, take risks, and get his shoes dirty

Unputdownable... Imagine a sleek, twenty-first century version of In Cold Blood

A triumph of insight and concision, brilliant both as a psychological study and as the portrayal of a community

A masterpiece... It's a level of moral discomfort almost without equal in literature

Savagely intense and utterly compelling... This is his paciest and cleanest-cut book...few books could better deserve a second chance to find new readers

The Adversary is exactly the idea I have of a modern novel: struggling deftly with facts and with itself

An absolutely stunning piece of work, totally involving and unforgettable

This is the sort of story I dreamed of covering when I was a journalist. The sort of story for which the phrase You couldn’t make it up was invented. The Adversary takes a deep, mesmerising dive into the darkness of a human soul. There were moments when I truly could not believe what I was reading. But unlike other serial killer noirs sitting on my shelves, this horror is real. And so much more chilling for that.

[A] book that fairly struck me over the head was The Adversary… it’s the coexistence of almost unimaginably variant realities within a family that haunts you.

A remarkably thoughtful and unnerving book...mesmerising

Profoundly disturbing...a remarkable and undoubtedly important book - perhaps even a necessary one

A fascinating meditation on Jean-Claude Romand and what his bizarre life might mean... Carrère's inquiry is highly personal, written in lucid prose...the narrative is often mesmerizing, and revealing about the fragility of human relationships

As a writer, Carrère is straight berserk; as a storyteller he is so freakishly talented, so unassuming in grace and power that you only realize the hold he's got on you when you attempt to pull away... You say: True crime and Literature? I don't believe it. I say: Believe it

Justifiably considered the French In Cold Blood

The sense of dread he conveys is authentic – it is a loss of self, of connection to the world...dystopian

It’s fascinating, watching Carrere dig around in Romand’s inner life… By the end you feel this clever, intriguing book is too good for its banal human subject.

A jaw-dropping tale of murder and deception that goes right to the heart of what it means to be human... The perfect antidote to an excess of sunshine

**SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** 
 
On the Saturday morning of January 9, 1993, while Jean Claude Romand was killing his wife and children, I was with mine in a parent-teacher meeting… 
 
With these chilling first words, acclaimed master of psychological suspense, Emmanuel Carrère, begins his exploration of the double life of a respectable doctor, eighteen years of lies, five murders, and the extremes to which ordinary people can go. 
 
Discover the true story that is ‘beyond the imagination of even the best crime writer' (Sunday Times) 
 
'A disturbing look at the dark side of human nature that is powerfully written and beautifully told' Louis Theroux 
 
'Mesmerising' Sunday Telegraph 
 
'Stunning' Evening Standard 
 
'Unputdownable' Washington Post 
 
'A masterpiece' New York Times

Limonov

TELEGRAPH BOOKS OF THE YEAR and OBSERVER BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014 
 
Limonov is not a fictional character, but he could have been. He's lived a hundred lives. He was a hoodlum in Ukraine, an idol of the Soviet underground, punk-poet and valet to a billionaire in Manhattan, fashion writer in Paris, lost soldier in the Balkans, and now, in the chaos after the fall of communism a charismatic party leader of a gang of political desperados. Limonov sees himself as a hero, but he is also a bastard. Carrere suspends judgment. Carrère decided to write about Limonov because he thought "that his life, romantic and reckless, tells us something, not just about Limonov or Russia, but the story of all of us after the end of World War II."

He's the best kind of writer, not just a bestseller but a man who is not afraid to leave the comfort zone of his desk, go out into the world, take risks, and get his shoes dirty ... His "non-fiction novel", Limonov, has two explicit modes - part adventure story, part cultural-historical analysis ... it is about Carrère's exploration of himself, his Russian heritage, and what it means to be a European after the second world war, especially since the end of the cold war

I loved Limonov by Emmanuel Carrère, which happens to be a book about a Russian guy. Like all of Carrère's work it's a sort of masterclass in creative writing

Carrère covers a lot of ground with cool honesty and careful humanity

A beguiling writer . . . Graceful and important

You might not have heard of [Limonov], and after you have read this you might wish you had not heard of him, but you will certainly have enjoyed reading about his life, thanks to the verve of Emmanuel Carrère's exhilarating narration. You will probably also understand considerably more about the country that produced such a narcissistic and controversial figure, whom the author finds alluring and repellent in equal measure . . . Carrère has seized on Limonov's projection of himself as a literary hero (or anti-hero) straight out of the pages of Dostoyevsky, Celine, or Henry Miller, and run with it

This is an extraordinary, fantastic book about an extraordinary, fantastic life. It's billed as a novel, can be read as a novel and would be a good novel if Eduard Limonov had never existed. But he does . . . you will learn an awful lot about Russia now and in the days of the Soviets

Russia, they say, cannot be understood with the mind alone, and neither can her looniest son to date, Edichka Limonov. It also takes a heart, a spleen, a liver and this beautiful book by France's greatest writer, Emmanuel Carrère. Get ready for the last real adventure of the 20th Century!

Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure

To paraphrase Calvino, Emmanuel Carrèrre's Limonov is a book about two things: Limonov, and everything else ... This virtuosically unclassifiable thing is somehow at once the liveliest of novels, the most illuminating of biographies, and the most consequential of philosophical inquiries - a loopy, hilarious, gut-punching quest after the shifting spirits of war, loyalty, discipline, pity, empathy, scorn, vitality, honor, ego, and, above all, the heroism of decency

Gideon Lewis-Kraus, author of A Sense of Direction

Limonov is not a fictional character, but he could have been. He's lived a hundred lives. He was a hoodlum in Ukraine, an idol of the Soviet underground, punk-poet and valet to a billionaire in Manhattan, fashion writer in Paris, lost soldier in the Balkans, and now, in the chaos after the fall of communism a charismatic party leader of a gang of political desperados.

Emmanuel Carrère

John Lambert

Kolkhoze is poignant and deeply novelistic, abounding in wonderful anecdotes… it is Carrère’s best, alongside Limonov

On 3 October 2023, beneath the dome of Les Invalides, the French Republic honours Hélène Carrère d’Encausse – renowned historian of Russia, member of the Académie Française, national figure. Among the mourners stands her son, Emmanuel Carrère, wondering who this formidable woman truly was: to the country, to history, and to him. 
 
In Kolkhoz, Carrère turns his unflinching gaze on his own lineage, crafting his most intimate and ambitious book yet. From aristocratic Russia to Soviet Central Asia, from émigré salons to the shadow of the gulag, he traces the destinies of a family scattered by revolution, ideology and pride. There are white Russian ancestors clinging to vanished grandeur; relatives lured back to Stalin’s USSR and swallowed by silence; a father obsessed with genealogy and lost nobility; and, at the centre, a mother whose brilliance, ambition and authority shaped both French intellectual life and her son’s inner world. 
 
As Carrère sifts through letters, archives and contested memories, he confronts the stories families tell to survive and the lies they tell to protect one another. What does it mean to inherit exile and privilege at once? How do political faith and historical catastrophe reverberate across generations? And can a son write about his mother with honesty without betraying her? 
 
By turns sweeping and surgical, tender and unsparing, Kolkhoz is a family epic and a reckoning: a meditation on communism and its afterlives, on filial piety and rebellion, and on the uneasy border between truth and love.

Emmanuel Carrère

Praise for Kolkhoz

Kolkhoze is poignant and deeply novelistic, abounding in wonderful anecdotes… it is Carrère’s best, alongside Limonov

Books by Emmanuel Carrère

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter