Easily of the books of the year so far. I will brook no dissent: throw away any end-of-the-year list that will not have this book on it. Blitzed through it in 3 days, and you should too.

In short, this is an account or chronicle of the trial of twenty men accused of being involved in the so-called “V13” (November 13, 2015) terrorist attacks in Paris. For 10 months, in 2021 and 2022, Carrére attended what was billed as the most expensive and complex trial in French history as a reporter for the weekly L’Obs, and the book represents an edited version of the weekly columns he produced.

To get an obvious point out of the way; yes, it calls to mind “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” but it does not feel like a particularly helpful reference here. To be sure, the banality of evil is amply attested to in these pages, but that cliché does not appear to interest Carrére all that much. Nor does he otherwise try to fit what he observes into any ideological or philosophical dogma. Instead, he is there to observe and to share what he sees and experiences.

It is Carrére at his best: so present in his writing, so human and humane in his perspective and preoccupations, so generous in giving access to himself and his impressions. As a result, what would otherwise be a cut-and-dried journalistic account feels intimate and personal, as in actually “told in person.” It is a report that reads like the best of fiction because of how good Carrére is at suspending the broadly chronological narrative to present his wonderful character studies—of the victims, the lawyers, his fellow reporters—or to offer a peek behind the scenes of the trial itself, such as when he talks about the friendships that he formed with some of the participants.

Yes, the story necessarily culminates with the verdict because the trial itself does; yet Carrére’s book takes a few more beats before signing off, and it is here that his project comes into complete focus. It is not exactly a spoiler in this case to spell out what that is or how the book ends, but I will still refrain from doing so here, other than to say that getting there is a wonderful and wonderfully moving experience.

— as always, huge thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an ARC via NetGalley

Emmanuel Carrère is one of my favourite writers and in V13 he returns to what he - in my opinion - does best: a mix of reportage, law and memoir that is humane, accessible and chilling at the same time.

V13 is the term the French use to refer to the horrific terrorist attacks of Friday 13 November 2015 in Paris (Bataclan, terraces, Stade de France) in which 130 people lost their lives.

In 2021, the 'trial of the century' started and Carrère followed it intensively, attending the court hearings almost daily for a year.

The book follows the chronological set-up of the trial, starting from the victims and their harrowing testimonies.

Next are the perpetrators, Salah Abdeslam being the only surviving member of the suicide commando, but there are quite a few aides in the box too and their guilt is not always clear. Here the facts of the case are presented, the preparation, but also their personalities and their defense strategies. The third and final part of about the organisation of the court and the French criminal system and how it comes to a judgment.

The book makes an impression, because of its subject matter. But Carrère also manages to find little interesting details, he is touched, he doubts he suffers and the reader with him. I couldn't put it away.

On Friday (vendredi), November 13, 2015, nine terrorists carried out three attacks in Paris in the name of the Islamic State. To a man, each attacker was raised and radicalized in diversity-obsessed Europe.

V13: Chronicle of a Trial is a product that does not really exist in the United States: a newspaper pays a well-regarded author and public intellectual to sit through a long trial and generate dozens of columns that interweave mundane reportage with stream-of-consciousness reflection. The book, whose English translation is set for release in November 2024, collects those columns, plus a few words for the book.

At times, the French system of criminal justice can seem worlds apart from the American one. In a terrorism trial such as the one featured here, the first set of evidence is presented not by the prosecutors, as in the United States, but by the victims, each of whom has an attorney appointed for him or her. With 130 murdered and another 416 injured (I've long been fascinated that the French word is blessés – were they "blessed" not to have died?) in the attacks, this stage of the trial itself took weeks.

Emmanuel Carrère admits that all of the victims' statements started to run together and repeat themselves. American reporters on the crime beat would never slip such distasteful frankness into their output. Either they would strive in vain for just-the-facts neutrality, or they would disingenuously swear, winking at the Pulitzer committee, that each individual presentation of a staggering 550 victims was equally emotionally shattering as the last. That is not necessarily a criticism of American journalism. It's simply downstream from Carrère's writing being a uniquely French phenomenon.

The United States has been wrestling with the doctrine of felony murder. If a man commits or attempts to commit any felony, and serious injury or death of any person is reasonably foreseeable from such commission, and any person dies, the man may be convicted of felony murder, the permissible punishment of which is often the same as that of first- or second-degree murder – that is, life imprisonment or even the death penalty. And when we say "any person dies," we really any person: a common fact pattern is two armed robbers trying to rob a convenience store at gunpoint, the clerk shooting one of them dead, and the second robber being charged with felony murder.

What does felony murder have to do with the Bataclan attacks? Carrère is aghast at the notion that each terrorist defendant be held equally responsible. This unemployed Islamist fanatic just smokes weed and plays video games and happened to give his macho terrorist buddies a ride after the attacks. That guy, sure, he was supposed to blow himself up, killing dozens and wounding hundreds, but after he put his suicide vest on he turned yellow and didn't. This handwringing was exhausting and boring. Many American jurisdictions prescribe the same penalty for attempts at committing crimes, and for being knowingly being an accessory after the fact to a crime, that applies to the crime that would have committed. I think this gets it right. What most concerns us is the intent to commit a crime. If I accidentally pick up someone else's phone and walk off with it, I ought not to be charged with larceny. But if I notice that someone else's phone is nicer than mine and I purposefully decide to take it, I'm morally and criminally culpable. Criminal intent being society's worry, a legal system should be designed to disincentivize the formation of criminal intent. Would-be criminals should not be rewarded because they are bad at committing crimes. The evidence showed that each of the V13 defendants knew or should have known what franchise they were helping or taking part in. The least culpable should not have our sympathy. Save that for the 550 direct victims and their many thousands of children, parents, spouses, and friends.

Compared with other Euro nations like Germany and Sweden, France has been almost quaintly insistent on assimilating its immigrants, passing laws to preserve the secularization of the state and going so far in 2011 as to ban face coverings in public. It has produced prominent Islamoskeptics like Michel Houellebecq whose novel Submission, practically an anthem for those who take seriously the threat of sharia law, could never have gained the traction in any other country that it did there. Submission was published in 2015, which was the year of the November 13 attacks and also the height of Germany's self-inflicted migrant crisis.

Americans who read V13: Chronicle of a Trial may gain a salutary realization that the inane culture-war issues that they think are the world's foremost crises – which bathroom should everyone use?, and so forth – are really not.