Amélie Nothomb Books In Order

Loving Sabotage

Here in its American debut edition, Loving Sabotage is the remarkable second novel by young Belgian literary phenomenon Amelie Nothomb. ‘I lived everything during these three years: heroism, glory, treachery, love, indifference, suffering, humiliation. It was in China, I was seven years old.’ So announces the narrator of Loving Sabotage, Amelie Nothomb’s critically acclaimed novel about a young girl who seems already stripped of illusions. The daughter of diplomats posted to Peking for three years in the mid seventies, our unnamed narrator charges about her tightly enclosed world of the concrete ghetto of San Li Tun on her ‘horse’ her bicycle with the dictatorial clarity and loneliness of a warrior philosopher. ‘From puberty onwards,’ she announces at one point, ‘life is just an epilogue.’ On the battlefield of an asphalt playground, in between ‘wars’ with the children of other nations, she discovers her first love: six year old Elena, her coldly indifferent ‘Helen of Troy.’ But she soon learns life’s hardest rule: if she wants to be loved, she must be cruel in return. A fast, furious and often hilarious novel of childhood infatuation and intuited truths, Loving Sabotage chronicles one girl’s precocious understanding of the struggles and pains of adult life.

Fear and Trembling

According to ancient Japanese protocol, foreigners deigning to approach the emperor did so only with Fear and Trembling. Terror and self abaseme*nt conveyed respect. Am lie, our well intentioned and eager young Western hero*ine, goes to Japan to spend a year working at the Yumimoto Corporation. Returning to the land where she was born is the fulfillment of a dream for Am lie; working there turns into comic nightmare. Alternately disturbing and hilarious, unbelievable and shatteringly convincing, Fear and Trembling will keep readers clutching tight to the pages of this taut little novel, caught up in the throes of fear, trembling, and, ultimately, delight.

The Character of Rain

The Japanese believe that until the age of three, children, whether Japanese or not, are gods, each one an okosama, or ‘lord child.’ On their third birthday they fall from grace and join the rest of the human race. In Amelie Nothomb’s new novel, The Character of Rain, we learn that divinity is a difficult thing from which to recover, particularly if, like the child in this story, you have spent the first tow and a half years of life in a nearly vegetative state.’I remember everything that happened to me after the age of two and one half,’ the narrator tells us. She means this literally. Once jolted out of her plant like , tube like trance to the ecstatic relief of her concerned parents, the child bursts into existence, absorbing everything that Japan, where her father works as a diplomat, has to offer. Life is an unfolding pageant of delight and danger, a ceaseless exploration of pleasure and the limits of power. Most wondrous of all is the discovery of water: oceans, seas, pools, puddles, streams, ponds, and, perhaps most of all, rain one meaning of the Japanese character for her name. Hers is an amphibious life. The Character of Rain evokes the hilarity, terror, and sanctity of childhood. As she did in the award winning, international bestesller Fear and Trembling, Nothomb grounds the novel in the outlines of her experiences in Japan, but the self portrait that emerges from these pages is hauntingly universal. Amelie Nothomb’s novels are unforgettable immersion experiences, leaving you both holding your breath with admiration, your lungs aching, and longing for more.

Antechrista

When Blanche’s mother, who finds her own daughter rather colourless, bookish and dull, is also dazzled by Christa, she soon invites her to stay at the family house. Suddenly Christa can do no wrong and, as Blanche’s parents scour their address books for long-lost friends to invite to dinner to meet the newcomer, their friendship sours and Blanche’s already negligible self-confidence goes into a steep decline. With all the characteristics of Amelie Nothomb’s unique fictional landscapes, Antechrista is a funny, dark and revealing journey through female friendship and rivalry.

The Life of Hunger

In a wistful, clever and unusual novel, Amelie Nothomb casts herself as hunger: hunger for experience, hunger for life, hunger for sweetness and, in what is the book’s nucleus, hunger for hunger the period during which she was afflicted by acute anorexia. Recounting the formative journeys of her youth, from Tokyo to Peking to Paris to New York, ‘The Life of Hunger‘ is a brilliant and moving examination of the self, and perhaps Amelie’s most mature and moving work to date.

Sulphuric Acid

Tired of traditional reality shows, the television audience wants blood, literally. One day, while out taking a walk in the Jardin des Plantes, Pannonique is piled into a cattle-truck. Suddenly, it seems, anyone can be picked up and hauled off to the studio without a moment’s notice. Set in an unspecified time, ‘Sulphuric Acid‘ tells the story of this reality TV death camp which has become the nation’s obsession – an amoral spectacle played out through the media – as we follow the shifting fortunes of Pannonique and her nemesis, the guard Zdena. A huge bestseller in her adopted France, it once again shows the unique voice and imagination of Amelie Nothomb.

Human Rites

Food is in short supply and the cold is unbearable. In a tantalizing m nage trois between a professor, his assistant, and a student, only the books bear witness to their plight.

Am lie Nothomb is the award winning author of 13 novels, including Hygi ne de l’assassin; Stupeur et tremblements, winner of the Grand Prix of the Acad mie Fran ais; and Robert des noms propres, which has sold over 250,000 copies in France. Human Rites is her first play.