The Adversary

A fascinating meditation on Jean-Claude Romand and what his bizarre life might mean... Carrère's inquiry is highly personal, written in lucid prose...the narrative is often mesmerizing, and revealing about the fragility of human relationships

New York Times

Unputdownable... Imagine a sleek, twenty-first century version of In Cold Blood

Washington Post

As a writer, Carrère is straight berserk; as a storyteller he is so freakishly talented, so unassuming in grace and power that you only realize the hold he's got on you when you attempt to pull away... You say: True crime and Literature? I don't believe it. I say: Believe it

Junot Díaz

The sense of dread he conveys is authentic – it is a loss of self, of connection to the world...dystopian

London Review of Books

The mesmerizing true crime tale of an apparently ordinary man whose life mutates in the space of a few blood-splattering hours from the realm of Renoir to that of Stephen King

People

A masterpiece... It's a level of moral discomfort almost without equal in literature

New York Times

A remarkably thoughtful and unnerving book...mesmerising

Sunday Telegraph

The story told here is truly beyond the imagination for even the best crime writer

Sunday Times

Profoundly disturbing...a remarkable and undoubtedly important book - perhaps even a necessary one

Daily Express

An absolutely stunning piece of work, totally involving and unforgettable

Evening Standard

A triumph of insight and concision, brilliant both as a psychological study and as the portrayal of a community

Blake Morrison, Independent on Sunday

Justifiably considered the French In Cold Blood

Paris Review

He’s the best kind of writer, not just a bestseller but a man who is not afraid to leave the comfort zone of his desk, go out into the world, take risks, and get his shoes dirty

Observer

The Adversary is exactly the idea I have of a modern novel: struggling deftly with facts and with itself

Laurent Binet, author of HHhH

Savagely intense and utterly compelling... This is his paciest and cleanest-cut book...few books could better deserve a second chance to find new readers

Sunday Times

It’s fascinating, watching Carrere dig around in Romand’s inner life… By the end you feel this clever, intriguing book is too good for its banal human subject.

Robbie Millen, The Times

Dark, strange, astonishing.

Marcel Theroux, Big Issue

This is the sort of story I dreamed of covering when I was a journalist. The sort of story for which the phrase You couldn’t make it up was invented. The Adversary takes a deep, mesmerising dive into the darkness of a human soul. There were moments when I truly could not believe what I was reading. But unlike other serial killer noirs sitting on my shelves, this horror is real. And so much more chilling for that.

Fiona Barton, author of The Widow

A disturbing look at the dark side of human nature that is powerfully written and beautifully told

Louis Theroux

[A] book that fairly struck me over the head was The Adversary… it’s the coexistence of almost unimaginably variant realities within a family that haunts you.

Megan Nolan, New Statesman, *Books of the Year*

A jaw-dropping tale of murder and deception that goes right to the heart of what it means to be human... The perfect antidote to an excess of sunshine

Paul Murray, author of THE BEE STING, Observer, *Summer Reads of 2023*