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“A powerful and deeply civilized memoir.”

— The New York Times, Feb 24 2020

Nomination for Best Book in Translation (Foreign Language Film)

— LitHub, Feb 7 2020

Philippe Lancon is billed on his memoir as the survivor of a massacre, but he will tell you that is not entirely true. Because the Philippe Lancon who was soon to be shot one morning in Paris was a different man on a different path, and try as he might, the author says, “I...

— The Independent, Feb 7 2020

On January 7, 2015, at around 11.30 am, two armed men entered the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. In minutes, 12 people lay dead. Philippe Lançon, a 51-year-old columnist at Charlie (and culture critic at Libération), was badly wounded. His book recounting...

— The Lancet, Jan 11 2020

“A memoir of unusual depth and perspicacity… Lançon transforms base reportage and memoir into a rarefied form of art that at times feels more like poetry, even music, than prose.”

— The Irish Independent, Nov 23 2019

“Disturbance is a hard book, but with no unusual bitterness or false simplicities. More than an account of a semi-recovery, it is also a magnificent tribute. Not just to Lançon’s murdered journalistic colleagues, but to the whole threatened tribe.”

— The Spectator, Nov 23 2019

Two memoirs touched me too: [...] Disturbance: Surviving Charlie Hebdo by Philippe Lançon, translated by Steven Rendall (Europa Editions, £14.99).

— Evening Standard, Nov 22 2019

“This engrossing, beautifully written book about finding a way forward is not just a remarkable document but an inspiration to others in quite different plights. Nothing else has touched me in quite the same way this year.”

— Evening Standard, Nov 14 2019

“The irruption of naked violence isolates a person from the world and it isolate others from the person who is subjected to it in any case it isolated me…” Disturbance is Philippe Lançon’s powerful memoir of the long road to healing after being caught up in the...

— NB Magazine, Nov 13 2019

“(...) The second book is Disturbance: Surviving Charlie Hebdo (Europa Editions) by Philippe Lançon, who survived, with life-changing injuries, the infamous massacre on 7 January 2015. This is not a book about such politics, but about “recovery” – if such a thing...

— The New Statesman, Nov 12 2019

“Lançon’s memoir, subtly translated by Steven Rendall, gives an uneasy feeling of voyeurism at times, such as when he depicts his surroundings once silence fell on the murder scene — the open skull of his friend lying nearby; the discovery of his own injuries; shreds of...

— The FT, Nov 11 2019

A terrorist atrocity reshapes a victim’s life in this biting memoir. Journalist and novelist Lançon (L’Élan) was wounded in the 2015 attack by two al Qaeda followers that killed 11 of his colleagues at the Paris satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo; one bullet caused a disfiguring...

— Publishers Weekly, Nov 11 2019

One victim’s powerful response to the 2015 massacre favours philosophy and wit over anger and polemic

— The Guardian, Nov 4 2019

Stalin’s quip that “one death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic” gets to the essence of how we become numbed by the frequency of mass shootings. We simply can’t compute the magnitude of such horror, but to read about the random death of a child might bring a sudden...

— ForeWord, Nov 1 2019

Lançon’s searing memoir of the attack on the satirical weekly publication Charlie Hebdo by two terrorists in Paris on 7 January, 2015, details how it cleaved his life in two. He shares his shocked vision of his dead journalistic colleagues and of his own injuries on the day...

— BBC, Oct 31 2019

“Thoroughly gripping…. Intimate and absorbing portrayal of both a man and a country in recovery.”

— France Magazine, Oct 7 2019

The night before two terrorists entered the office of the French satirical publication Charlie Hedbo and killed 12 people, injuring 11 more, contributor Philippe Lançon attended a showing of Twelfth Night. He intended to write a review of the show the next day. He was preparing...

— LitHub, Sep 13 2019

“A frank, relentless, gripping memoir that illustrates both man’s inhumanity to man and how quiet resolution can reclaim and restore.” A survivor of the 2015 massacre in Paris recalls the brutality of the attack and narrates the seemingly endless series of his consequent...

— Kirkus, Aug 18 2019

“When two terrorists attacked the satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, journalist Philippe Lançon, though seriously wounded, was among the survivors. In this extraordinary memoir which moves back and forth across his whole life, and delves deep into his...

— The Bookseller, Aug 16 2019