Carrère, Emmanuel

The French author Emmanuel Carrère was born to a middle-class family in Paris's 16th arrondissement. He is the son of Louis Carrère, a senior civil servant, and the famous historian and member of the Académie Francaise, Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, who predicted the dissolution of the Soviet Union in her book L'Empire éclaté, published in 1978. Many of her Russian relations – princes, dukes, counts, chamberlains, the empress's ladies-in- waiting – decided to leave Russia immediately after the revolution.