The acclaimed French author attended the trial - the longest in French legal history – every day. As his gripping courtroom chronicle is published, he talks about trauma, justice – and being drawn to the darkest of stories

For 10 months, between September 2021 and June 2022, the French writer Emmanuel Carrère went every day to the Palais de Justice in Paris. He was there to attend the trial of a group of men accused of involvement in the terrorist attacks carried out in that city in November 2015, in which Islamic State militants massacred 130 people and injured hundreds more. The trial, which became known in the media as “V13”– the attacks took place on Friday ( Vendredi ) 13th – was the longest in French legal history, and among the most high profile.

Carrère’s book V13, published in English translation this month, is the result of those months spent in court, listening to the testimonies of the survivors, the bereaved and those defendants connected to the attacks who remained alive. (The terrorists themselves – the men who shot and killed all those Parisians at the Bataclan theatre, the attackers outside the Stade de France and on the streets outside restaurants and cafes – were all killed, either in the suicide attacks of that night or in police shootouts.)