The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception - Softcover

Carrère, Emmanuel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1784705802 ISBN 13: 9781784705800

Publisher: Vintage, 2017

Synopsis

**SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**

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...

With these chilling first words, acclaimed master of psychological suspense, Emmanuel Carrère, begins his exploration of the double life of a respectable doctor, eighteen years of lies, five murders, and the extremes to which ordinary people can go.

Discover the true story that is ‘beyond the imagination of even the best crime writer' (Sunday Times)

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

'Mesmerising' Sunday Telegraph

'Stunning' Evening Standard

'Unputdownable' Washington Post

'A masterpiece' New York Times

About this title

Review

"On the morning of Saturday January 9th 1993, while Jean-Claude Romand was killing his wife and children, I was with mine in a parent-teacher meeting..." So begins Carrere's disturbing exploration of the mind of a ruthless killer, a man so entangled in the web of his own deceptions that it became easier to kill than confess. Every detail of Romand's life had been built on an elaborate edifice of fabrication. How could he have lied to so many for so long without anyone suspecting him?

His journey into madness began when Romand failed an exam at medical school. He quietly dropped out of college while friends and family continued to believe his career was advancing in leaps and bounds. To the outside world, he became a highly respected research scientist with the World Health Organisation, an esteemed intellectual and humanitarian who'd even been given a signed bust by Brigitte Bardot in gratitude for his support for her animal rights foundation. Somewhere in all the lying, the real Romand had been irretrievably lost. And when finally his dissimulated world began to crumble around him, the threat to his sense of self drove him to eradicate those closest to him. Not only did he murder his wife and young children, it also transpired that a few days earlier, Romand had also killed his parents.

Emmanuel Carrere's record of his correspondence with Romand charts a horrific journey into the psyche of a killer and questions the nature of human identity human, delusion and evil. With a keen sense of narrative and exacting control of an unravelling life, he draws a window into a darker place next door.--Rebecca Johnson

Review

"A disturbing look at the dark side of human nature that is powerfully written and beautifully told" (Louis Theroux)

"The story told here is truly beyond the imagination for even the best crime writer" (Sunday Times)

"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)

"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)

"Unputdownable... Imagine a sleek, twenty-first century version of In Cold Blood" (Washington Post)

"A triumph of insight and concision, brilliant both as a psychological study and as the portrayal of a community" (Independent on Sunday)

"A masterpiece... It's a level of moral discomfort almost without equal in literature" (New York Times)

"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)

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

"An absolutely stunning piece of work, totally involving and unforgettable" (Evening Standard)

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1784705802
• ISBN 13: 9781784705800
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208