Praise for Lives Other Than My Own "Whenever I try to describe this memoir--and I do that often, since it's a book I don't just recommend but implore people to read--I feel like I'm trying to parse a magic trick." -- Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review "You begin this memoir thinking it will be about one thing, and it turns into something else altogether--a book at once more ordinary and more extraordinary than any first impressions might allow." -- The New York Times "A beguiling writer.Graceful and important." --John Freeman, NPR "Carrère's memoir describes how a self-absorbed man is altered in crisis and develops a deep and perceptive capacity to see the struggles of others." --David Brooks, The New York Times "In Lives Other Than My Own , Emmanuel Carrère demonstrates that empathy can be the antidote to alienation, if we try for it. With the finely measured assurance of Chekhov, he achieves something altogether unexpected in modern literature: beatitude." --Gary Indiana, author of Rent Boy and Horse Crazy "Moving.

his prose is precise and measured.Through interviews with friends and relatives of both families, Carrère creates powerful portraits that celebrate ordinary lives." -- The New Yorker "Carrère's masterful storytelling weaves together the tenuous threads of fate that link happiness with misfortune, turning the theme of love and loss into a riveting, unclassifiable narrative." -- The Wall Street Journal Praise for Emmanuel Carrère "The current French intellectual scene has produced few such prolific and prodigiously talented personalities as Emmanuel Carrère." -- The New York Review of Books "Carrère is masterly both at singling out the telling detail and at grasping and conveying his subject as a whole . What is most compelling about his work is the quality of his mind, of his thinking. Of the scourging pressure of his need to understand." --Robert Gottlieb, The New York Times Book Review.