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ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF 2024 One of the London Times's Nine Best Literary Nonfiction Books of the Year "Extraordinary . . . Absolutely gripping." --Chris Power, The Guardian "Moving and masterful . . . [A] magnificent book." --Becca Rothfeld, The Washington PostOne of The New York Times' twelve books to read in NovemberA moving, hard-hitting account of the Paris attacks trial by France's leading nonfiction writer. Nearly every day for ten months, from September 2021 to June 2022, life on the �le de la Cit� in central Paris came to a standstill. The most expensive and complex trial in French history--featuring twenty men accused of involvement in the 2015 attacks on the Bataclan and other sites across Paris--was underway. More than three hundred lawyers represented thousands of victims and the accused, all of whom were given the chance to testify. The case ran to more than a million pages. And, nearly every day for ten months, Emmanuel Carr�re showed his press pass, walked through a metal detector, and took a seat in a windowless courtroom to bear witness. V13 isn't so much the story of a trial but of the community that formed around it--a city within the city, home to the innocent and the accused, the forgiving and the vengeful, the outspoken and the silent. Carr�re introduces us to lawyers, survivors, family members, and above all the defendants, assembling in painstaking detail a human portrait of the crime. What emerges from these pages is a study of good and evil--and a philosophical journey through the borderlands between the two. Not since Eichmann in Jerusalem has there been a book of this scope and ambition.