Adversary

“Justifiably considered the French In Cold Blood” (The Paris Review), The Adversary is a landmark work of true crime—and a deeply personal investigation of inexplicable evil.

“On the Saturday morning of January 9, 1993, while Jean-Claude Romand was killing his wife and children, I was with mine in a parent-teacher meeting.”

So begins Emmanuel Carrère’s unclassifiable masterpiece, now newly reissued. The crimes shocked France. For eighteen years, Romand’s life was the model of bourgeois contentment. Peers admired him as a doting family man, a loving son who called his parents every evening, and a respected researcher at the World Health Organization.

But those were all lies: Romand had never graduated from medical school or worked at the WHO. He spent his days wandering in the forest; he supported his family by defrauding relatives. When cracks appeared in his façade, Romand reacted in a way even he couldn’t explain.

Emmanuel Carrère is “widely understood as France’s greatest writer of nonfiction” (The New York Times Magazine); The Adversary, his account of the life, crimes, and trial of Jean-Claude Romand, is his magnum opus.