**A selection of the best short work by France's greatest living
nonfiction writer
**
A New York Times Notable Books of 2020
No one writes nonfiction like Emmanuel Carrère. Although he takes cues
from such literary heroes as Truman Capote and Janet Malcolm, Carrère
has, over the course of his career, reinvented the form in a search for
truth in all its guises. Dispensing with the rules of genre, he takes
what he needs from every available form or discipline--be it theology,
historiography, fiction, reportage, or memoir--and fuses it under the
pressure of an inimitable combination of passion, curiosity, intellect,
and wit. With an oeuvre unique in world literature for its blend of
empathy and playfulness, Carrère stands as one of our most distinctive
and important literary voices.
97,196 Words introduces Carrère's shorter works to an English-language
audience. Featuring more than thirty extraordinary essays written over
an illustrious twenty-five-year period of Carrère's creative life, this
collection shows an exceptional mind at work. Spanning continents,
histories, and personal relationships, and treating everything from
American heroin addicts to the writing of In Cold Blood, from the
philosophy of Philip K. Dick to a single haunting sentence in a minor
story by H. P. Lovecraft, from Carrère's own botched interview with
Catherine Deneuve to the week he spent following the future French
president Emmanuel Macron, 97,196 Words considers the divides between
truth, reality, and our shared humanity as it explores remarkable events
and eccentric lives, including Carrère's own.
