V13
Chronicle of a Trial
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Published:14th Nov '24
Should be back in stock very soon
A moving, hard-hitting account of the Paris attacks trial by France’s leading non-fiction writer
'Absolutely gripping' GUARDIAN
'A marvel' SUNDAY TIMES
'Magisterial' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
'Extraordinary and generous' WASHINGTON POST
'A gripping testimony of terror and loss' OBSERVER
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.
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
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
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 -- Lyndsey Stonebridge
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 -- Katie Kitamura
Brilliant. Clear-eyed, wise and compelling -- Paul Murray
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 -- Megan Nolan
ISBN: 9781911717058
Dimensions: 222mm x 143mm x 30mm
Weight: 429g
320 pages