Description

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 Carrere 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 Carrere 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 Review

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 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 — Rob Doyle 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