A Night Of Atrocities

‘There was a confetti of flesh everywhere, recalls one survivor of the attacks at the Bataclan, where dead bodies piled high.

- Tunku Varadarajan

V13: Chronicle of a Trial

By Emmanuel Carrère FSG, 320 pages, $29.

'The Bataclan can hold up to 1,498 people and it was packed that night. Nearly a thousand spectators in the pit alone." These words, factual and ominous, are from "V13," by Emmanuel Carrère, a novelist and nonfiction writer of sturdy repute in France. The night he refers to is that of Friday, Nov. 13, 2015-vendredi 13 in French. His book's title is the shorthand that's used in France to refer to the events of that date, when nine terrorists, swearing allegiance to Islamic State, murdered 130 people in Paris.

Ninety of the victims, we are told, were killed in "two hours, thirty-eight minutes and forty-seven seconds" of shooting and suicide-bombing at the Bataclan theater in the 11th Arrondissement.