The Paris-born Emmanuel Carrère (b. 1957) is considered one of the best writers of the new French generation. During his literary career of eighteen years, he has published eight works of fiction and written several film scripts. Carrère's production reveals the fragility and ephemerity of identity. One's hidden fears make one's imagination swell to such proportions that one's whole life crumbles. Carrère received the prestigious Prix Femina Literary Prize in 1995 for his novel, La Classe de neige (The Class Trip) on the basis of which Claude Miller directed a film. His book on the life of the sci-fi author Philip K. Dick, Je suis vivant et vous êtes morts (1993, "I Am Alive and You Are Dead"), and his latest book, L'Adversaire (2000, The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception), will be adapted for the screen. The Adversary is based on real life. On January 9 1993, Jean-Claude Romand killed his wife, children and parents. During his pre-trial detention it turned out that the man was not the medical doctor with a brilliant international career that he had pretended to be. Eighteen years before, he had chickened out of the final exam of his medical studies, but lied that he had passed it. Carrère tries to imagine what went on in Romand's head: why did he feel obliged to go on living a lie and finally kill the people he loved most? Carrère's works have been translated into some twenty languages. The Adversary alone has been or is being published in English, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Norvegian and Danish, and other languages.

Photo: Charlotta Boucht