translated by John Lambert
Every Monday between September 2021 and June 2022, the French writer Emmanuel Carrère would file 1,500 words for the Paris-based magazine L’Obs (now Le Nouvel Obs). He was part of the magazine’s three-member team covering the trial of 20 men accused of involvement in the ghastly 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, but while his colleagues were court reporters who cranked out daily dispatches on the proceedings, Carrère’s interest in the case—purportedly France’s most expensive trial—was, in his own words, “only authorized by his desire.”
Carrère knew he’d signed up for something long and emotionally grueling: the roster included close to 1,800 plaintiffs, represented by more than 300 lawyers, with each plaintiff allotted a minimum of 30 minutes to testify. And yet he showed up most afternoons in a windowless room at the Palais de Justice, not because he or anyone he knew was affected by the attacks but because “I think that between the time we first enter the courtroom and when we leave it for good, something in us will have shifted ground.”
