The author of The Moustache and Yoga turns his attention to a real-life story of remarkable deception and callous murder with the case of Jean Claude Romand, who lied to his family for eighteen years about who he really was before ultimately murdering them.
Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month for July (2017)
On the Saturday Morning of January 9, 1993, while Jean Claude Romand was killing his wife and children, I was in a parent-teacher meeting...
With these chilling first words, acclaimed master of psychological suspense Emmanuel Carrere 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.
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9781784705800
Number of pages: 208
Weight: 140 g
Dimensions: 196 x 130 x 26 mm
A disturbing look at the dark side of human nature that is powerfully written and beautifully told - Louis Theroux
The story told here is truly beyond the imagination for even the best crime writer - Sunday Times
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 - People
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 - Observer
Unputdownable... Imagine a sleek, twenty-first century version of In Cold Blood - Washington Post
A triumph of insight and concision, brilliant both as a psychological study and as the portrayal of a community - Independent on Sunday
A masterpiece... It's a level of moral discomfort almost without equal in literature - New York Times
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 - Sunday Times
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 - Evening Standard
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. - Megan Nolan, New Statesman, Books of the Year*
A remarkably thoughtful and unnerving book...mesmerising - Sunday Telegraph
Profoundly disturbing...a remarkable and undoubtedly important book - perhaps even a necessary one - Daily Express
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 - New York Times
This reads like really well written literary fiction with a postmodern bent, which, when considering it details a true crime, makes it all the more compelling.
Carrere first positions himself in direct relation to...
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When you see that a book is being described as literature/true crime you can be a little bit suspicious, but The Adversary fully loves up to this. This is incredibly well-written, and makes for compulsive reading.... More
The Adversary tells the tale of Jean Claude Romand, respected doctor and researcher, liver of a double life, and murderer of his family. Less an exposé of the crime than the man who committed it, Emmanuel Carrere... More
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