Paris Attack Widower's Book 'You Won't Have My Hatred' Becomes Bestseller

A French journalist whose wife died during the November 2015 terrorist attack in Paris has published a new book which has already sold out its initial print run, media reports said.

French journalist Antoine Leiris, whose wife was killed during last year's terrorist attack in Paris, has already sold the first 30,000 copies of a book he wrote describing how he made peace with the tragedy, according to media reports.

Titled Vous n'aurez pas ma haine ("You won't have my hatred"), the book is already being translated into 18 languages.

These words were something that the 34-year-old posted on his Facebook page after identifying the body of his 35-year-old wife, Helene, who was one of 90 concertgoers killed by jihadists at the Bataclan concert venue on November 13, 2015.

Antoine Leiris, the husband of a woman killed in Paris, writes to the terrorists… "You won't have my hatred" pic.twitter.com/kLxPtmtV80

— Woodhouse College (@WoodhouseCol) 18 ноября 2015 г.

"You stole the life of an exceptional being, the love of my life, the mother of my son, but you won't have my hatred," Leiris said at the time.

These desperate yet measured remarks immediately went viral as people tried to make sense of the violence, which claimed the lives of more than 100 people on November 15, 2015.

As for the book, it starts with the description of a horrendous night when Leiris stayed at home with his 17-month-old son Melvil, while his wife left to attend a concert featuring the US group Eagles of Death Metal at the Bataclan concert hall.

People hug each other before being evacuated by bus, near the Bataclan concert hall in central Paris, on November 14, 2015

© AFP 2023 / FRANCOIS GUILLOT

Leiris recalls in the book how he was terrified to watch the first images of the attacks which began appearing on the television news back then. "My heart was in my mouth," he wrote in reference to those fateful events.

The book focuses on the couple's now 22-month old child, with Leiris mentioning the mothers at his son's nursery school rallying around the pair, "unable to cope with the thought of these two poor guys alone in a big house without mum."

Devastated by grief, Leiris, however, says that life should go on for them and that each day one of them makes a little meal for Melvil with "the taste of a mother's love."

At least 130 people were killed and over 350 more injured in the November attacks on the Bataclan Theater, the Stade de France, and a number of restaurants in Paris.

Daesh (ISIL/ISIS), which is outlawed in Russia and many other countries, has claimed responsibility for the attack.