The Moustache

The most important French writer you've never heard of

There are few great writers in France today, and Emmanuel Carrère is one of them

Emmanuel Carrère is a novelist, journalist, screenwriter and film director. He is the award-winning, internationally renowned author of sixteen books, including V13, Limonov, The Kingdom, 97,196 Words, Yoga and the Sunday Times bestselling The Adversary.

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE ADVERSARY 
 
One morning, a man shaves off his long-worn moustache, hoping to amuse his wife and friends. But when nobody notices, or pretends not to have noticed, what started out as a simple trick turns to terror. As doubt and denial bristle, and every aspect of his life threatens to topple into madness – a disturbing solution comes into view, taking us on a dramatic flight across the world. 
 
Translated by Lanie Goodman 
 
Elegant novellas-in-translation, VINTAGE EDITIONS celebrate the audacity and ambition of the written word, transporting readers to wherever in the world literary innovation may be found.

From the bestselling author of THE ADVERSARY

Yoga

Completely arresting. He [Carrère] has the talent...of showing us his foibles without demanding that we identify with them.

An exhilarating new work of autofiction... It's wonderful. It is Carrère's willingness to face his own flaws full in the face that makes his writing so striking, and - dare I say it - relatable.

Yoga is the story of how a life can fray, tighten itself into a noose, unravel and, in the process, be built and braided into lines that make up a profound and moving work of art.

A devastating portrait...[Carrère's] singular, ever-expanding work, in which one pain need never obscure another, in which truths and half-truths are held not in opposition but in delicate, precarious balance, is an answer in itself.

I loved Emmanuel Carrère's Yoga... A useful manual for this era, where nothing seems connected but everything's related.

Times Literary Supplement *Books of the Year*

Unlike any book I've ever read... Carrère is anything but ordinary as a talent, but his great and precious gift is to reveal his own mind in such a way that illuminates the infinity that belongs to every human person.

Megan Nolan, author of ACTS OF DESPERATION

[With] relentless clarity of thought and confessional honesty... Yoga is fascinating on the purpose of meditation... [an] extraordinarily compelling account.

Stunning...Yoga is a deeply moving reflection on the painful occupation that is living.

[Carrère's] skill in constructing a narrative from disparate materials is exceptional... [and] relentlessly interesting.

Impressive... reveals itself as a monumental book on the human condition.

How does one harmonise the yin and yang of a life broken in two? Yoga is the implacable tale of a writer lost in his kingdom.

An immensely engaging, lively and exciting writer... [Yoga] is increasIngly hypnotic; lyrical, hypnotic and elegant. There is no doubt that a great intellect is at work, keen to explore the depths of his own troubled mind.

A tender, honest, intelligent portrait of the human condition.

Emmanuel Carrère is a novelist, journalist, screenwriter, and film director. He is the award-winning, internationally renowned author of fifteen books including My Life as a Russian Novel, Limonov, The Kingdom, 97,196 Words, and the Sunday Times bestselling The Adversary. He lives in Paris.

This is a book about yoga. Or at least, it was. 
 
January 2015. High on literary success and familial bliss, Emmanuel Carrère embarks on a rigorous ten-day meditative retreat in rural France in search of clarity and material for his next book, which he thinks will be a subtle, upbeat introduction to yoga. 
 
But his trip is cut short, and he is brought down to earth with a thud when he returns to a Paris in turmoil in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack. From then on, Carrère's life - along with his novel-in-progress - begins to unravel in ever more unexpected ways. 
 
'The story of how a life can fray, tighten itself into a noose, unravel... profound and moving' Geoff Dyer 
 
'Extraordinarily compelling' Financial Times

Essays

97,196 Words

From the bestselling author of The Adversary and 'France's greatest writer of nonfiction' (New York Times), the first collection of Carrère's essays in English.

A superb collection of essays by Emmanuel Carrère, one of the best storytellers around… When Carrère writes a story, he knows how to stir up powerful and conflicting emotions in his reader, which is one of the reasons he’s so good… It’s the best book I’ve read for ages.

Emmanuel Carrère is known for the way he bends and breaks genres… [he] is the most celebrated writer of high-end nonfiction in France… the core of Mr Carrère's talent is precisely that he brings readers into sympathetic contact with others, powerful and powerless, insiders and outsiders… It is a masterful illusion.

Impossible not to fall in love with…Carrere is regarded as a superstar writer… it is a joy to be reminded of all the wonderful things that [creative non-fiction] can do.

Emmanuel Carrère, a man fascinated by crime, eroticism and the oddities of human behaviour, is arguably France’s most original living writer of non-fiction… he creates reportage, that, with its insight and humanity, is closer to literature than journalism.

A page-turner and a mainstream bestseller in France…Carrère is without doubt extremely crafty… He writes non-fiction as if it were fiction… Gripping essays.

97,196 Words is that unlikely thing: a perfect introduction for those who are unfamiliar with the brilliant, constantly unsettling world of Carrère’s work and a welcome treat for those of us who are already uncomfortably (and therefore happily) settled there.

Carrère’s transparency about his approach is what sets him apart… In his native France it is precisely because his non-fiction exudes an erudite intimacy and lack of obfuscation that he is hailed as a writer who can be compared with Montaigne.

The French polymath writes in a brilliantly unsettling manner, skipping genre from memoir to theological tract.

Read the definitive essay collection from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Adversary, dubbed 'France's greatest writer of non-fiction' (New York Times) 
 
'The most exciting living writer' Karl Ove Knausgaard 
 
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. For him, no form is out of reach: theology, historiography, reportage and memoir - among many others - are fused under the pressure of an inimitable combination of passion, curiosity and intellect that has made Carrère one of our most distinctive and important literary voices today. 
 
97,196 Words introduces Carrère's shorter work to an English-language audience. Featuring more than thirty extraordinary texts written over an illustrious twenty-five-year period of Carrère's creative life, the book shows a remarkable mind at work. Spanning continents, histories, and personal relationships, 97,196 Words considers the divides between truth, reality and our shared humanity, exploring remarkable events and eccentric lives, including Carrère's own. 
 
* A New York Times Notable Book *

Class Trip

Elegant, pocket-sized paperbacks, VINTAGE Editions celebrate the audacity and ambition of the written word, transporting readers to wherever in the world literary innovation may be found.

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE ADVERSARY 
 
Little Nicolas is a delicate, timid schoolboy, with an excitable, if morbid imagination – the child of an overbearing father. So, two weeks away on the class trip is already enough to fill him with dread. But when a child goes missing, Nicolas’ mind turns to gruesome possibilities, impelling him to take up the role of detective – and edge closer to a truth more shocking than Nicolas’ worst fears. 
 
Translated by Linda Coverdale 
 
'There are few great writers in France today, and Emmanuel Carrère is one of them' Paris Review 
 
Elegant, pocket-sized paperbacks, VINTAGE Editions celebrate the audacity and ambition of the written word, transporting readers to wherever in the world literary innovation may be found.

Other Lives But Mine

From the bestselling author of The Adversary, an expansive meditation on death, grief and the limtless reach of the human spirit

Read this an expansive meditation on death, grief and the limtless reach of the human spirit from the bestselling author of The Adversary 
 
 ‘Compelling… Carrère has the gift of speaking simply and directly of the essentials’ Evening Standard 
 
 Beset by arguments and the fear that things between them may be falling apart, writer Emmanuel Carrère and his partner, Hélène, journey to Sri Lanka to spend Christmas along the coast. But when the 2004 tsunami devastates the country, sweeping their friends’ young daughter away, the couple are bound in their search among the dead. As further tragedy strikes back home, with the news that Hélène’s sister is dying of cancer, Carrère turns his characteristic eye to the subject of these two lives, documenting the dramatic effect that their deaths have on those around them. 
 
 Precise, sober, and suspenseful, Other Lives But Mine offers an intimate portrait of the fragility of life and the restorative processes of grief, that illuminates the astonishing richness of human connection.

The Kingdom

'This is a brilliant, shocking book ... also witty, painfully self-critical and humane ... it is a work of great literature' Tim Whitmarsh, Guardian 
 
'The Kingdom, already a huge bestseller in France, is thrilling, magnificent and strange' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times 
 
The sensational international bestseller from one of France's most fêted writers - an epic novel telling the story of Christianity as it has never been told before, and one man's crisis of faith. 
 
Corinth, ancient Greece, two thousand years ago. An itinerant preacher, poor, wracked by illness, tells the story of a prophet who was crucified in Judea, who came back from the dead, and whose return is a sign of something enormous. Like a contagion, the story will spread over the city, the country and, eventually, the world. Emmanuel Carrère's astonishing historical epic tells the story of the mysterious beginnings of Christianity, bringing to life a distant, primeval past of strange sects, apocalyptic beliefs and political turmoil. In doing so Carrère, once himself a fervent believer, questions his own faith, asks why we believe in resurrection, and what it means. The Kingdom is his masterpiece. 
 
'An utterly brilliant book' Catherine Nixey, The Times

Brilliant, shocking... also witty, painfully self-critical and humane... it is a work of great literature

Emmanuel Carrère is said by many to be one of the best writers in France, if not Europe... The Kingdom, a huge bestseller in France, is thrilling, magnificent and strange

An utterly brilliant book... Carrère is a vivid guide and a knowledgeable one

A novelised memoir that vividly captures the drama of the Christian experience... A celebration of religious imagination - Catholic, French, Judaic, Hellenic - The Kingdom has been a runaway bestseller in France. In Britain, it may succeed as a relief and an antidote

Corinth, ancient Greece, two thousand years ago. An itinerant preacher, poor, wracked by illness, tells the story of a prophet who was crucified in Judea, who came back from the dead, and whose return is a sign of something enormous. Like a contagion, the story will spread over the city, the country and, eventually, the world. Emmanuel Carrère's astonishing historical epic tells the story of the mysterious beginnings of Christianity, bringing to life a distant, primeval past of strange sects, apocalyptic beliefs and political turmoil. In doing so Carrère, once himself a fervent believer, questions his own faith, asks why we believe in resurrection, and what it means. The Kingdom is his masterpiece.

Emmanuel Carrère

I’ll read anything by Emmanuel Carrère, a roving intellectual with a curious mind . . . A powerful read

Emmanuel Carrère [is] quite possibly France’s best non-fiction writer… [V13 is] a masterpiece

Extraordinary . . . A lattice of absorbing storylines . . . Absolutely gripping

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

Compelling and richly rendered . . . Carrère is one of the most exciting and formally innovative of current non-fiction writers

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

Magisterial . . . It's a reminder of humanity, and its frailty

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

A curious but compelling mix of dramatic reconstruction, psychological deliberation and personal reflection

Carrère has . . . forged an extremely readable story out of a dizzying amount of information

An affirmation of life, of survival, of the bonds of community and solidarity that allow us to rebuild in the aftermath of shattering violence

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

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

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

Brilliant. Clear-eyed, wise and compelling

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

Chronicle of a Trial

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 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 deeply humane intellect, making him one of the most distinctive and important literary voices today.

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Emmanuel Carrère

Praise for V13

I’ll read anything by Emmanuel Carrère, a roving intellectual with a curious mind . . . A powerful read

Emmanuel Carrère [is] quite possibly France’s best non-fiction writer… [V13 is] a masterpiece

Extraordinary . . . A lattice of absorbing storylines . . . Absolutely gripping

I’ll read anything by Emmanuel Carrère, a roving intellectual with a curious mind . . . A powerful read

Emmanuel Carrère [is] quite possibly France’s best non-fiction writer… [V13 is] a masterpiece

Extraordinary . . . A lattice of absorbing storylines . . . Absolutely gripping

I’ll read anything by Emmanuel Carrère, a roving intellectual with a curious mind . . . A powerful read

Emmanuel Carrère [is] quite possibly France’s best non-fiction writer… [V13 is] a masterpiece

Extraordinary . . . A lattice of absorbing storylines . . . Absolutely gripping

Books by Emmanuel Carrère

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