Author Guide · Nonfiction Novels & Memoir
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Emmanuel Carrère began as a novelist and film critic, the comfortably raised son of one of France’s most prominent historians, before he found the form that would define his career: what he calls the “nonfiction novel,” built from real people, real crimes, and real grief, told with the pacing and interiority of fiction. He corresponded from prison with Jean-Claude Romand, a man who spent eighteen years pretending to be a doctor before murdering his own family, to write The Adversary. He wrote about Eduard Limonov, the Russian writer-turned-political-agitator, with the same close attention. He turned his own family’s history, his own breakdowns, and his own losses into material with a frankness that has occasionally strained his real relationships as much as it’s deepened his books. He has won the Prix Femina, the Prix Renaudot, the Prix Médicis and the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature, and remains one of the most widely translated French writers at work today.
By Lisanne Swart · 17 books · True Crime · Non-Fiction · Memoir · 1982–2025 · Updated September 2026
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Quick answer
Emmanuel Carrère has written seventeen books. The best known are the non-fiction novels: The Adversary (2000), Lives Other Than My Own (2009), Limonov (2011), The Kingdom (2014), Yoga (2020) and V13 (2022). Before those came five novels, starting with L’Amie du jaguar (1983), and a biography of Philip K. Dick (1993). His most recent is Kolkhoze (2025), which won the Prix Médicis; it appears in English as Kolkhoz in autumn 2026. Start with The Adversary. Born 9 December 1957 in Paris, he has also directed three films of his own.
Quick facts about Emmanuel Carrère
- Born
- 9 December 1957, Paris
- Books
- 17, from Werner Herzog (1982) to Kolkhoze (2025)
- Split
- 5 novels, a biography, an essay on alternate history, and ten works of non-fiction
- Publisher
- P.O.L for almost everything since 1984
- Most recent
- Kolkhoze (2025), 560 pages about his mother’s family — it won the Prix Médicis in November 2025 and made the first Goncourt selection
- In English
- Kolkhoz, translated by John Lambert, Fern Press in the UK and Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the US, autumn 2026
- Also a director
- three films of his own: Retour à Kotelnitch (2003), La Moustache (2005) and Ouistreham (2021, with Juliette Binoche)
- Five of his books filmed
- by Claude Miller, Nicole Garcia, Philippe Lioret and, in 2024, Kirill Serebrennikov
- His mother
- the historian Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, perpetual secretary of the Académie française from 1999 until her death on 5 August 2023
- Biggest award
- the Prix Médicis in 2025. Before that the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature in 2021, for his body of work
All 17 books by Emmanuel Carrère, in order
Werner Herzog
Carrère’s first book, a monograph on the German filmmaker Werner Herzog, written while Carrère was working as a film critic for magazines including Positif and Télérama. It runs to 127 pages and has never been translated into English.
Mainly of interest to readers tracing his development from film criticism into fiction and nonfiction — not translated widely and not the place to start.
— LisanneL’Amie du jaguar
His actual first novel, and the only one of his books that P.O.L did not originally publish. It has never appeared in English, which is why most English-language lists of his work begin with Gothic Romance a year later and call that the debut.
Gothic Romance
A Gothic pastiche imagining the night Mary Shelley conceived the idea for Frankenstein, blending horror and literary history. His second novel, not his first — L’Amie du jaguar came out the year before. Translated by Lanie Goodman for Scribner in 1990.
An early stylistic exercise, useful mostly for completists tracing his range before he found the true-story register that would define his major later work.
— LisanneThe Moustache
A man shaves off the moustache he’s worn for years, expecting his wife to notice — instead, she insists he never had one at all, and the ensuing gaslighting-like unraveling of his sense of reality escalates into genuine psychological horror. John Updike called it “stunning.” The American translation, by Lanie Goodman for Henry Holt in 1988, is titled The Mustache. Carrère directed the film himself in 2005.
Carrère’s first major critical success, and a compact, unsettling introduction to his lifelong interest in identity, perception, and the instability of what we think we know to be true — themes that resurface throughout his nonfiction.
— LisanneLe Détroit de Behring
An essay on uchronia — alternate history — and what it means to imagine the past having gone differently. It won the Grand Prix de la science-fiction in the essay category and the Prix Valéry-Larbaud, both in 1987. P.O.L reissued it in February 2025 under the title Uchronie, which is why it occasionally turns up as two separate books. Never translated into English.
Hors d’atteinte ?
A novel, and the last of the five he wrote before turning to true stories. The question mark is part of the title. Never translated into English.
I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick
A biography of American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, written in a novelistic style that reconstructs Dick’s interior life and paranoid visions alongside the documented facts of his troubled career and personal life.
An early experiment in the technique Carrère would later perfect in The Adversary and Limonov: using a real person’s documented life as the raw material for a narrative told with the texture of fiction.
— LisanneClass Trip
A young boy, sent on a school skiing trip, becomes convinced his controlling father is somehow connected to the disappearance and murder of a child in a neighboring village, in a taut psychological novel about a child’s inner life under the weight of parental fear. Claude Miller filmed it in 1998; the film took the Jury Prize at Cannes.
Won the Prix Femina and remains one of his most acclaimed pure novels — a useful counterpoint to his later nonfiction, showing the same unflinching interest in disturbing psychology applied to invented rather than documented lives.
— LisanneThe Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception
The true story of Jean-Claude Romand, who spent eighteen years pretending to be a doctor and international official, sustaining the lie through elaborate daily routines, before murdering his wife, children, and parents in 1993 rather than let the deception collapse. Carrère corresponded with Romand from prison while researching the book, which became a bestseller translated into 23 languages and is often compared to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Nicole Garcia filmed it in 2002 with Daniel Auteuil.
The book that established Carrère’s signature style and remains his most widely read work internationally. Start here — it’s the clearest, most compact demonstration of everything his later nonfiction builds on.
— LisanneMy Life as a Russian Novel
A deeply personal account weaving together Carrère’s investigation into his Russian grandfather, a wartime collaborator, with the unraveling of his own relationship, including his decision to publish an explicit letter to a girlfriend in the newspaper Le Monde.
His most nakedly confessional book, and the one that most directly shows how Carrère turns his own life, including its most embarrassing moments, into material without visible self-protection.
— LisanneLives Other Than My Own
Carrère witnesses the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami while on vacation in Sri Lanka, where a young child is swept away, and shortly afterward his girlfriend’s sister, a judge and mother of three, dies of cancer. The book follows both losses and the people left behind, including a fellow judge navigating his own terminal illness. Philippe Lioret adapted it in 2011 as Toutes nos envies.
His gentlest, most compassionate book — less interested in psychological darkness than in how ordinary people find dignity and endurance in the face of loss. A strong choice if The Adversary’s subject matter feels too grim as an entry point.
— LisanneLimonov
A biographical novel tracing the life of Eduard Limonov, a Soviet-born writer, soldier, political dissident, and provocateur whose path runs from Ukraine through New York bohemia, Parisian literary success, the Balkan wars, and eventually Russian opposition politics. Won the Prix Renaudot in 2011. Kirill Serebrennikov filmed it in 2024, with Ben Whishaw in the title role.
Often considered Carrère’s major work — a sweeping, morally ambivalent portrait of a genuinely dangerous and fascinating figure, and useful for understanding Russian history through one deeply strange individual life.
— LisanneThe Kingdom
A sprawling account of the origins of Christianity, told partly through the perspective of Luke and Paul, and partly through Carrère’s own account of a period in his life when he was, unexpectedly, a devout Catholic before losing his faith entirely. It won the Prix littéraire du Monde in 2014.
His most ambitious and unusual book — equal parts historical reconstruction and personal confession about a religious period of his own life that he later came to view with real ambivalence.
— Lisanne97,196 Words: Essays
A collection of Carrère’s journalism and essays spanning several decades, covering subjects from a fraud trial to Katherine Mansfield to his own experience with depression, offering a wide-angle view of his nonfiction range outside his book-length projects.
The best single volume for seeing the breadth of what Carrère has written journalistically, beyond the handful of book-length nonfiction novels he’s best known for.
— LisanneYoga
Begun as a light book about meditation retreats, Yoga instead became an account of Carrère’s severe bipolar breakdown, hospitalization, and the terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices, which occurred while he was attending a meditation retreat, forcing a total rewrite of what the book was going to be.
One of his most unguarded books about his own mental health, written in real time rather than reconstructed from safe distance — described by reviewers as both devastating and, ultimately, luminous.
— LisanneV13: Chronicle of a Trial
Compiled from weekly dispatches Carrère wrote while attending nearly all of the ten-month trial of the perpetrators of the November 13, 2015, Paris terrorist attacks, focusing on the testimony of survivors, victims’ families, and the accused. It won the Prix Aujourd’hui in 2022 and the Premio Strega Europeo in 2023.
A late-career return to the courtroom-observation mode of The Adversary, this time as sustained, present-tense journalism rather than a single reconstructed crime.
— LisanneKolkhoze
His most recent book, and the one he calls a “roman vrai” — a true novel. It opens with the state funeral of his mother, the historian Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, in October 2023, and works backwards through her family: Georgian, stateless, arrived in France with nothing. It won the Prix Médicis in November 2025 and made the first Goncourt selection. John Lambert’s translation appears as Kolkhoz from Fern Press in Britain and Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the United States in autumn 2026.
The Films: Three He Directed, Five Made From His Books
Carrère is a filmmaker as well as a writer, and the two lists get mixed up constantly — including on his own English Wikipedia page. They are not the same thing.
- Three films he directed himself — Retour à Kotelnitch (2003), a documentary that premiered at Venice; La Moustache (2005), from his own novel, with Vincent Lindon and Emmanuelle Devos; and Ouistreham (2021), with Juliette Binoche, which opened the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. That last one is adapted from a book by Florence Aubenas, not by him — a distinction almost every filmography gets wrong.
- Five films made from his books, by other people — Class Trip (1998, Claude Miller), which won the Jury Prize at Cannes; L’Adversaire (2002, Nicole Garcia, with Daniel Auteuil); Toutes nos envies (2011, Philippe Lioret, from Lives Other Than My Own); and Limonov: The Ballad (2024, Kirill Serebrennikov, with Ben Whishaw), which premiered in competition at Cannes. A fifth, Je suis heureux que ma mère soit vivante (2009), is drawn from an article of his rather than a book.
- Television — He co-wrote several first-season episodes of Les Revenants (2012), the French series released in English as The Returned. The series was created by Fabrice Gobert; Carrère was one of the writers, not the creator.
- Two omnibus volumes — Gallimard has collected his work twice in its Quarto series: Vers le réel (2023, 1,021 pages, seventeen works) and Vers le réel II (2025). Both reprint books already listed above rather than adding anything new, and both turn up in catalogues as though they were new titles.
How Carrère Actually Works
He puts himself in the first sentence and does not leave. The Adversary opens with where he was on the morning of the murders — at a parent-teacher meeting with his own children — before it says anything about Romand. The reader is told from the outset whose account this is and what that account might be worth.
The books are assembled from documents rather than reconstructed from imagination: prison correspondence in The Adversary, weekly courtroom dispatches in V13, family papers in Kolkhoze. He calls the result a nonfiction novel, which describes the pacing rather than any licence with the facts.
He writes about people he does not defend. Romand, Limonov and the accused in V13 are given the same close, patient attention as the victims, and the books decline to resolve what the reader is supposed to feel about that. It is the most consistent complaint made against him and it is also the method.
And the cost is usually his own. He has published a letter to a girlfriend in a national newspaper, written about his own hospitalisation as it happened, and built his most recent book around a mother who would rather he had not. “Everything you think is worth writing,” he told The Paris Review in 2013. “Not necessarily worth keeping, but worth writing.”
Emmanuel Carrère Books in Order
In publication order: Werner Herzog (1982), L’Amie du jaguar (1983), Gothic Romance (1984), The Moustache (1986), Le Détroit de Behring (1986), Hors d’atteinte ? (1988), I Am Alive and You Are Dead (1993), Class Trip (1995), The Adversary (2000), My Life as a Russian Novel (2007), Lives Other Than My Own (2009), Limonov (2011), The Kingdom (2014), 97,196 Words (2016), Yoga (2020), V13 (2022) and Kolkhoze (2025).
There is a hinge in the middle of that list. Everything up to 1995 is invented: five novels, a monograph on Werner Herzog and an essay about alternate history. Everything from The Adversary (2000) onward is true, or claims to be. He has published no fiction in twenty-five years.
Four of the seventeen have never been translated into English: L’Amie du jaguar, Le Détroit de Behring, Hors d’atteinte ? and the 1982 Herzog monograph. That is the main reason English-language lists of his work usually stop at thirteen. Le Détroit de Behring was reissued in France in 2025 under a new title, Uchronie, which is why it sometimes appears twice.
Nothing continues from one book to the next, so read them in any order — with one pairing. My Life as a Russian Novel (2007) and Kolkhoze (2025) are eighteen years apart and are the same investigation: his mother’s family, and what she would rather he did not write.
Where to start with Emmanuel Carrère
If you have never read him
→ Start with The Adversary (2000). Short, propulsive, and the clearest demonstration of the nonfiction-novel style that defines his major work.
If you want his gentlest, most compassionate book
→ Lives Other Than My Own (2009). Less psychologically dark than The Adversary, more interested in ordinary endurance and grief. Published in Britain as Other Lives But Mine.
If you want the most decorated book
→ Kolkhoze (2025) won the Prix Médicis, and Limonov (2011) the Prix Renaudot. Kolkhoze reaches English readers as Kolkhoz in autumn 2026.
If you want his most nakedly personal book
→ Yoga (2020) or My Life as a Russian Novel (2007), both built from his own breakdowns and relationships rather than someone else’s life.
Frequently asked questions about Emmanuel Carrère's books
How many books has Emmanuel Carrère written?
Seventeen: five novels, a monograph on Werner Herzog, an essay on alternate history, a biography of Philip K. Dick, and nine works of non-fiction from The Adversary (2000) to Kolkhoze (2025). English-language lists usually give thirteen, because four of the seventeen have never been translated: L’Amie du jaguar (1983), Le Détroit de Behring (1986), Hors d’atteinte ? (1988) and the 1982 Herzog book.
Who is Emmanuel Carrère?
Emmanuel Carrère is a French author, screenwriter, and film director, born in Paris on 9 December 1957, best known for genre-blurring nonfiction novels including The Adversary, Lives Other Than My Own, and Limonov, which won the Prix Renaudot in 2011. He was the son of the historian Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, perpetual secretary of the Académie française from 1999 until her death in 2023.
What was Emmanuel Carrère’s first book?
His first published book was Werner Herzog (1982), a monograph on the German filmmaker, written while he was a film critic. His first novel was L’Amie du jaguar (1983), published by Flammarion and never translated into English — which is why English-language sources often name Gothic Romance (1984) as his debut novel by mistake.
What is Kolkhoze about?
Kolkhoze (2025) is Carrère’s book about his mother’s family. It opens with the state funeral of the historian Hélène Carrère d’Encausse in October 2023 and works backwards through a Georgian family that arrived in France stateless. He calls it a “roman vrai,” a true novel. It won the Prix Médicis in November 2025 and appears in English as Kolkhoz, translated by John Lambert, in autumn 2026.
What is The Adversary by Emmanuel Carrère about?
The Adversary is Carrère’s account of the true story of Jean-Claude Romand, a French man who spent eighteen years pretending to be a doctor and international official before murdering his wife, children, and parents in 1993 rather than have his lies exposed. Carrère corresponded with Romand from prison while researching the book, published in 2000 and often compared to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.
What is Limonov about?
Limonov is Carrère’s 2011 biographical novel about Eduard Limonov, a Russian writer, dissident, soldier, and political provocateur whose life took him from Soviet Ukraine to New York, Paris, and the Balkan wars, and eventually into Russian opposition politics. The book won the Prix Renaudot and was filmed by Kirill Serebrennikov in 2024, with Ben Whishaw in the title role.
Is Emmanuel Carrère’s writing fiction or nonfiction?
Most of Carrère’s major books since the late 1990s are nonfiction, built from real events, real people, and extensive research, though he often calls them “nonfiction novels” because they use narrative techniques associated with fiction. He has published no fiction since Class Trip in 1995; the five novels all come before that.
What awards has Emmanuel Carrère won?
The Prix Femina in 1995 for Class Trip, the Prix Renaudot in 2011 for Limonov, the FIL Prize for Literature in Romance Languages in 2017, the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature in 2021, and the Prix Médicis in 2025 for Kolkhoze. Earlier he won the Grand Prix de la science-fiction and the Prix Valéry-Larbaud, both in 1987, for Le Détroit de Behring. Note the spelling: the Prix Femina takes no accent, even in French.
Which Emmanuel Carrère books have been made into films?
Four books and one article. Class Trip was filmed by Claude Miller in 1998 and won the Jury Prize at Cannes; L’Adversaire by Nicole Garcia in 2002; Lives Other Than My Own by Philippe Lioret in 2011, as Toutes nos envies; and Limonov by Kirill Serebrennikov in 2024. Separately, Carrère has directed three films himself, including La Moustache (2005) from his own novel.
Is Emmanuel Carrère related to Hélène Carrère d’Encausse?
Yes. Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, the historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, was his mother. She was elected to the Académie française in 1990, only the third woman admitted, and became its first female perpetual secretary in 1999, a post she held until she died on 5 August 2023. His sister, Marina Carrère d’Encausse, is a French television doctor and journalist.
What is V13 about?
V13: Chronicle of a Trial is Carrère’s 2022 account of the trial of the perpetrators of the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, based on weekly dispatches he wrote while attending nearly all of the ten-month trial in person.
What is the best Emmanuel Carrère book to start with?
The Adversary is the most commonly recommended starting point: short, propulsive, and the book that established the nonfiction-novel style he became known for. Lives Other Than My Own is also frequently recommended as an entry point for readers who want his more personal, reflective register.
Sources
- Emmanuel Carrère — Wikipedia
- Emmanuel Carrère — P.O.L, his publisher
- Emmanuel Carrère — Bibliothèque nationale de France
- Emmanuel Carrère — Princess of Asturias Foundation
- Kolkhoze — Wikipedia (Prix Médicis 2025)
- The Art of Nonfiction No. 5 — The Paris Review, 2013
- Hommage à Mme Hélène Carrère d’Encausse — Académie française
Bibliography last verified 7 September 2026.
“Everything you think is worth writing. Not necessarily worth keeping, but worth writing.”
— Emmanuel Carrère, The Paris Review, “The Art of Nonfiction No. 5” (2013).
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