TOGETHER, ALWAYS

Carole and Carlos Ghosn

(L’Observatoire, 304 pages, 2021)

***TRANSLATION SAMPLE AVAILABLE HERE***

On November 19, 2018, Carlos Ghosn was arrested at Haneda Airport, on the grounds of underreporting his earnings and misuse of company assets by Nissan, where he was CEO for seventeen years. Imprisoned the same evening, he remained detained for 130 days, during which he was forbidden to correspond with his wife, Carole. The former “samurai,” once the head of the world’s leading automobile group, whose calendar was full a year in advance and whose associates included heads of state, suddenly had nothing.

 This book is an intimate account of his spectacular fall from grace, colored with incomprehension and feelings of injustice. He tells us about his everyday life during his detention in the Kosuge prison where, in his sixty-five-square-foot cell, the former CEO was humiliated daily. He describes the conditions of his incarceration, the intermittent interrogations by Japanese prosecutors, revelations about and betrayals by former associates, and the preparation of his defense against the powerful group that he himself created—all written without concession, and with sincerity and complete candor.

Carole Ghosn writes of her shock, the trial of her beloved’s absence, and, most notably, her fight against the powers detaining him. Indeed, Carole Ghosn never stopped knocking on every door, “even if it meant waiting an hour in front of the Élysée Palace,” alerting the media to the byzantine Japanese penal system and how France had abandoned her husband, anticipating that he’d “crack.” And, of course, he cracked, but not as the Japanese prosecutors would have liked: he decided to escape and find her. Against all the odds.

Carlos Ghosn is a French-Brazilian businessman, who has served as the chairman and CEO of France-based Renault, Chairman and CEO of Japan-based Nissan, and chairman of Mitsubishi Motors. He has been living with his wife in Lebanon following his escape from Japan.