A complete book, a dazzling narrative construction where the story of a family and the history of the 20th and 21st centuries converge.
Koljós is Emmanuel Carrère’s most intimate book: a gripping family story that begins with the state funeral of his mother, Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, a major figure in French intellectual life, the first woman to lead the Academy, and a recognized authority on Russian history. Her death in 2023 prompts the author to review a collection of archives, letters, and photographs that his father had gathered throughout his life, which form the starting point of this investigation: a genealogy deeply intertwined with some of the great conflicts of the 20th century, spanning from Tbilisi to Paris, from prerevolutionary Russia to present-day Ukraine.
Carrère thus reconstructs the journey of his great-grandparents, the Zurabishvili, enlightened bourgeois who went into exile from Georgia after the Bolshevik Revolution; the erratic grandfather Georges, marked by poverty, defeatism, and a collaboration with the German occupiers that is never fully clarified; and, above all, the unstoppable rise of Hélène, brilliant, severe, rigorous, and often impenetrable; a legendary and controversial personality whose legacy and complexity shape those around her. He also rediscovers the discreet figure of his father, Louis, a gentle and humble character always in Hélène’s shadow, providing an emotional counterpoint to maternal austerity.
Emmanuel Carrère’s new novel, winner of the Médicis Prize and the Grand Continent Prize in 2025, moves between family history and grand history, offering an accurate portrait of Europe in the past and present century. But above all, it is a confrontation with the memory of the maternal figure seen through the author’s usual blend of precision, empathy, and lucidity. A confrontation that reveals the public and private facets of Hélène Carrère, but also the deep love and recognition her son has for all that he owes her.
