“Un crime ou une prière”: Narrative Ethics in Emmanuel Carrère’s L’Adversaire

How can you tell the story of a man who murdered his whole family? And how should you call the narrative that tries to tell that story: “un crime ou une prière”? These are the questions that haunted Emmanuel Carrère throughout the writing of his 2000 masterpiece, "L’Adversaire." We will try to grasp the meaning of these questions and their import for narrative ethics, while discussing Carrère’s work in the context of both contemporary nonfiction and the history of the novel.