A moving and harrowing account of the V13 trial. Carrère writes with precision and compassion for both the victims and defendants. I was especially impressed by the technique used early on in which multiple victims’ accounts are woven together to create one cohesive narrative. As Carrère reminds us, many of their testimonies are repetitive, yet no two are the same, because each experiences the events from a perspective that can only be their own. I wish there had been a little more reflexivity about the atmosphere of pervasive Islamophobia in France and how that interacts with the facts of the case.

An extraordinary piece of reportage that raises fascinating questions about the process and purpose of justice, told with just the right balance of objectivity and compassion.

My thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for this advanced copy of a book that looks at the trial of those suspected for being a part of the terrorist incident in France that left lives destroyed, families torn asunder, and what justice and human life actually mean in this era we find ourselves in.

We live in a time when countries can bomb other countries, reducing cities to powder, humans to dust, and civility to become passé. This is considered diplomacy by other means. When a government is attacked, its populous used as targets as revenge for these acts, it is a barbarity that must be meet by the highest justice in the land. Those who are murdered, or maimed for life physically and psychologically are assigned a value to be paid to them for these acts, leaving people to argue for almost pain payments. Prosecutions and defense fight tooth and nail in the courtroom, and drink together at night, praising each others arguments. This is the world we find ourselves in all documented in this incredible book. V13: Chronicle of a Trial by writer, journalist, screenwriter and director Emmanuel Carrère, translated from French by John Lambert, is a look at the French trial of the century, dealing with the terrorist attack on the 13th of November, a trial that was the longest and most expensive in French history.

The author is not a full-time journalist but has worked on a lot of law related cases in France, as well as directing films, and writing both fiction and nonfiction. Barring an incident with COVID, Carrère attended everyday of this trial, one that lasted 10 months from opening statements to final verdict. Carrère assignment was about 1,400 words a week about what was happening. Carrère covers all the events of the trial, from the plaintiffs statements, accounts of what happened the night men attacked a concert hall, set off suicide bombs outside a stadium, and murdered over 130 people. These opening will break your heart. Stories that start with such promise, ending in violence, and pain that will not go away. Carrère goes into what made these men decide to become martyrs, why one did not, and those caught in the wake of their flood of violence. Carrère looks also in the justice system, and the system used to pay out victims, where trauma is monetized, the more trauma, the higher the payout. And of course the trial results.

I first became aware of Carrère when I read his book on the author Philip K. Dick. I have also read his book on Yoga and spiritualism. I still can't get over this is the same author. Carrère brings almost a Truman Capote feel, along with a strong French feeling to the writing. Writing about those who survived what happened and the pain they still feel, has to be some of the best writing I have ever come across. Carrère's empathy, his feeling for these people comes off the page, and overwhelms in many ways. Carrère is also a bit sympathetic to some of the defendants. People who got swept up, doing bad things but not expecting a murder spree to come up. Carrère discusses the philosophy, and the human feeling about murder and violence as politics, and how government policy and righteous revenge seem to be in the eye of the government in power.

This book has a narrative that is hard to break away from. Once started, no matter how sad, mad, or even outraged at how the protectors, ie the police and intelligence services messed up, one does not want to stop reading. A book that floods the reader with a lot of emotions, the worst being uncertainty. Is this justice? Can there be justice. Especially when both sides seem to think of this as a sports game, praising each other for good arguments, or legal actions. I'm know I will be thinking about this book for quite a long time.

I have always found Carrère's writing evocative and concise. Perfect for telling complete, well-crafted, emotional, yet objective reports. There’s a touch of the personal, almost fictional, that helps maintain the pace and immerse the reader in what is being written.

V13 is no exception. It is a well-crafted, engaging, and tragic report, perfectly capable of allowing emotions to shine through and guiding the reader to understand what has happened, to live with their thoughts, and to question them.

It addresses death, life, guilt, victims and perpetrators, justice, and mistakes. Many errors, many blunders and oversights, but also resilience. The reader is pushed to look beyond what emotions compel them to see; this book invites introspection before confronting reality, challenging what one has always believed and imagined, and offering a different perspective on the same issues.

This book is highly recommended because it encourages reasoning, deepening one's thoughts, and the responsibility of being reflective, of having to look at painful things with an external gaze. It is a book for people who are not afraid to change their opinions, nor of the gray areas between good and evil, between victims and perpetrators. And as is often the case with his books, one ends up realizing that there is a life before reading Carrère and a life after.

A special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read the English edition in advance. The complete article on this book will be published on my Medium profile on November 21, 2024.

I was emotionally unprepared for what awaited me within Emanuel Carrere's V13: Chronicle of a Trial. I imagine few readers are prepared, except perhaps for those who were present for the terrible events in Paris on November 13, 2015, or who attended the trial of the surviving accused of the multiple attacks at a nightclub, a sports arena, and a few cafes.

Nor did I even know that this same group of men were also responsible for suicide bombing attacks in Belgium, on an airport and a train station, on March 22, 2016, by which time I was even more distracted by events here in the U.S.


Let's be real; the attack I previously knew as "the Bataclan shootings" mostly escaped my notice; there were ridiculously awful things unfolding closer to home then, and I don't follow the Eagles of Death Metal -- the band playing the Bataclan that night -- or international football -- there was a friendly match between France and Germany at the Stade de France -- very closely. I would probably still have been pretty ignorant of this whole affair had it not been a significant element of Virginie Depentes' Vernon Subutex trilogy, which she was still writing when the attacks took place and into which she wrote them with devastating effectiveness.

Oddly enough, it was as I was grabbing Despentes' newest novel, Dear Dickhead (coming soon to a blog near you) off of Netgalley that I saw V13*, recognized the author (Carrere penned my favorite biography of Phillip K. Dick, I Am Alive and You Are Dead), and noticed the coincidence: she who first made me take serious notice of the Bataclan attack had a new book out, and a book about the trial was there for the taking at the same time. How could I not get them both?

Carrere was present for almost every day of the nine-month trial of the 14 men accused of helping plan or abetting the attacks; most of the men who actually entered the locations, fired the guns, and activated the suicide vests, died in the attacks or in later battles with police (some in Belgium, where the same Islamic State cell carried out additional attacks in early 2016). One of the defendants was supposed to blow himself up but changed his mind; some others were caught up helping him escape; others rented the cars or the apartments in which the attackers stayed, or watched ISIS beheading videos with the attackers at their hangout spot in Belgium back in the day.

Normally propaganda hides horror. Here it puts it on show. The Islamic State doesn't say: this is war, sadly for good to triumph we must commit terrible acts. No, it lauds itself for its sadism. It uses sadism, displays of sadism, and permission to be sadistic to recruit.
As I read Carrere's careful, vivid and extremely empathetic account of the trial, my mind kept looking for diversions from the tragedy, often using my ignorance as an excuse. Thus upon discovering that three of the attackers who killed and died that day rode into Paris in a SEAT, I took time out to reflect on how the only other time I've encountered that model of car in literature was in Graham Greene's charmingly bittersweet Monsignor Quixote, in which the title character and a Communist ex-mayor of a Spanish town drive around the countryside in a SEAT they've christened Rocinante. What becomes of my pleasant associations with that car -- which I assure you has not once crossed my mind since I read the Greene novel sometime in the late 1980s or so -- I started wondering. No, Kate, focus. It's not like this book is boring. It's just unbelievably tragic and tough and terrible. Because Carrere, and his English translator John Lambert, are committed to putting me right there in the courtroom while a few hundred witnesses and victims, investigators and, yes, perpetrators, tell their stories, and some very capable and committed defense attorneys try to do right by their clients... in an utterly unfamiliar-to-me justice system.

In the course of testimony, which includes that of François Hollande (who was the president of France at the time of the attacks), something happens which I can't imagine ever happening in a U.S. trial: the actions of the host nation are called into question, considered seriously as justification for what the accused and the deceased attackers did. France was heavily involved in bombing Syria, attacking the Assad regime that had mounted the first big backlash against the Arab Spring and which was continuing to repress its people -- but also, in attacking the territory ruled by the regime, harming civilians. The V13 attackers, many of whom had gone to Syria to defend Islam, felt that they were striking back. If they were culpable, so was France. And many other countries, including mine.

Carrere also devotes time to the stories of the defendants themselves, several of whom were close friends with the ringleader of V13, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and were involved at various levels in his journey to Syria to help the Islamic State help Assad's victims to fight back, and to establish and defend their hoped-for caliphate. Some even were along for the trip and spent time in Syria, even to bringing along their families -- an account of the experiences of one of their wives is especially memorable and harrowing.

Many of the attorneys on both sides, many of whom became friendly acquaintances of his during the Long months of the trial, also get time in Carrere's spotlight. On both sides they were highly skilled, professional and committed to finding the truth and seeing justice done.

In sum, if you know nothing about the attacks, if you want to know more about them, if you want to understand better what turns ordinary immigrants into terrorist killers, or just more about the French justice system and the investigative process that uncovered the identities of the assailants, living and dead, then you owe yourself a look at V13. If none of those things interest you, but you appreciate top level journalism and non-fiction writing, then you owe yourself a look at V13. Even if non-fiction isn't usually your bag and you just appreciate a compelling story and good storytelling, you owe yourself a look at V13.

Just maybe keep some tissues handy.

*The title refers to the day of the attack -- V for "Vendredi" ("Friday" in French) and 13 for the day of the month. Yes, the Paris Attacks occurred on Friday the 13th because of course they did.

An absolutely remarkable book -- moving, perceptive, intelligent, and above all humane. Though the subject matter is very difficult, the writing was compelling and Carrere's voice was indespensible.

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.