A short life of the author
Emmanuel Carrère (b. 1957) was born on 9 December 1957 in Paris, France. His mother, Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, is a historian of Russia and the permanent secretary of the Académie française. He studied at Sciences Po and worked as a journalist and screenwriter before becoming a full-time writer.
Life and Career
His early fiction — The Mustache (1986, about a man who shaves his moustache and no one notices), Class Trip (1995) — was accomplished and unsettling.
The Adversary (2000, L’Adversaire) — about Jean-Claude Romand, a man who pretended to be a doctor at the World Health Organisation for eighteen years, and when the deception was about to be exposed, murdered his wife, children, and parents — was his breakthrough. Carrère’s method — inserting himself into the narrative, questioning his own motives for writing about the case, visiting Romand in prison — established his signature: nonfiction that is also a meditation on the ethics of writing about other people’s lives.
My Life as a Russian Novel (2007) — ostensibly about his Hungarian grandfather’s wartime disappearance — was his most confessional work. Limonov (2011) — a biography of Eduard Limonov, the Russian writer, vagabond, and far-right politician — won the Prix Renaudot. The Kingdom (2014) — about the origins of Christianity, combined with memoir about Carrère’s own period of religious faith — was his most ambitious book.
V13 (2022) — about the trial of the perpetrators of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks — was his most recent major work.
Major Works and Themes
Carrère writes about imposture, belief, and the difficulty of knowing another person. His books are always double: they are about their subjects and about the act of writing about them.
Key Works
- The Adversary (2000)
- Limonov (2011)
- The Kingdom (2014)
Collecting Carrère
French first editions (P.O.L.) are the primary collectibles. English firsts (Metropolitan/Picador) bring $20–$60.