One of contemporary non-fiction's most innovative writers documents the aftermath of the horrific 2015 attacks in Paris which left 130 people dead, including the dramatic nine-month-long trial that followed in its wake.
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.
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9781911717058
Number of pages: 320
Weight: 429 g
Dimensions: 222 x 143 x 30 mm
Extraordinary . . . A lattice of absorbing storylines . . . Absolutely gripping - Chris Power, Guardian
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 - Will Lloyd, Sunday Times
Extraordinary and generous - Washington Post
Compelling and richly rendered . . . Carrère is one of the most exciting and formally innovative of current non-fiction writers - Guardian
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 - Observer
Magisterial . . . It's a reminder of humanity, and its frailty - Sunday Telegraph
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 - Spectator
A curious but compelling mix of dramatic reconstruction, psychological deliberation and personal reflection - Economist
Carrère has . . . forged an extremely readable story out of a dizzying amount of information - New Statesman
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
On Friday 13 November 2015, coordinated attacks left 131 dead and hundreds injured at various sites in Paris - outside the Stade de France, cafe terraces and the Bataclan theatre. Islamic State claimed responsibility.... More
You know within the first page you are in safe hands; the author's eloquently spare style guides the reader through the abject horror of the plaintiff testimonies, and the knotty, complex response of the defence.... More
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