★ 2024-11-26
France’s “trial of the century.”
On November 13, 2015, Islamic State terrorists killed 130 people and wounded nearly 500 others in shootings and suicide bombings across Paris. Nine of the militants were killed in the attacks on “V13”—Friday (vendredi) the 13th. The trial of 20 men accused of involvement in the attacks began in September 2021 and lasted nine months. There to write about it was journalist and novelist Carrère, author of97,196 Words: Essays andThe Adversary: A True Story of a Monstrous Deception. Carrère is no legal specialist, but he tells an engrossing story of justiceà la française; the book originally appeared as columns in the French magazineL’Obs. Readers will quickly notice that French trials are different. Unlike America’s “adversarial” legal system, the “inquisitorial” French system lacks dramatic courtroom confrontations. Instead, defense and prosecution, with the active participation of the judge, examine the facts of a case. Perhaps most startling, the crime’s victims (and their lawyers) are present and participate. This allows Carrère to describe—perhaps at more length than some readers would prefer—horrific experiences of those who were caught in the attacks or who discovered that someone they loved had been killed. Except for one defendant (whose explosive belt may have been defective), the others varied from jihadist fellow travelers to associates who may or may not have been entirely innocent. Readers learn details of how the attacks were planned (very sloppily), how they were carried out (with much confusion), and how the police reacted (with incompetence before the attacks and overreaction afterward). Mostly, Carrère offers a penetrating account of how France dealt with a mass murder. The trial was grueling, but it was necessary. As public prosecutor Camille Hennetier says of the verdict in her closing remarks: “It will not heal the wounds, be they visible or invisible. It will not bring the dead back to life. But it can at least reassure the living that here law and justice have the last word.”
An invaluable look into another nation’s response to terrorism.
"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
"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
