Amlie Nothomb

Vocation

Belgian writer who writes in French. Although Nothomb claims to be born in Japan, she discovers Japan in actuality at the age of two, living there until she was five years old, and then subsequently lived in China, New York, Bangladesh, Burma, Coventry and Laos. She is from a distinguished Belgian political family; she is the grandniece of Charles-Ferdinand Nothomb, a Belgian foreign minister (1980–1981), and great granddaughter of writer and politician Pierre Nothomb. She has one brother and one sister, Juliette Nothomb. Nothomb's first novel, Hygiène de l'assassin, was published in 1992. Since then, she has published approximately one novel per year, including Les Catilinaires (1995), Fear and Trembling (1999) and Métaphysique des tubes (2000, published in English as The Character of Rain). She has been awarded numerous prizes, including the 1999 Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française, the Prix René-Fallet, and the 1993 Prix Alain-Fournier. While in Japan, Nothomb attended a local school and learned Japanese. When she was five, the family moved to China. "Quitter le Japon fut pour moi un arrachement" ("Leaving Japan was a wrenching separation for me"), she wrote in Fear and Trembling. Nothomb moved often, and she did not live in Europe until she was 17, when she moved to Brussels. There, she felt as much a stranger as everywhere else. She studied philology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. After some family tensions, she returned to Japan to work in a Japanese company in Tokyo. Her experience of this time is told in Fear and Trembling. She wrote a romanticized biography (The Book of Proper Names) for the French female singer Robert in 2002 and during the period 2000-2002 she wrote the lyrics for nine tracks of the same artist. A documentary was directed by Laureline Amanieux about Amélie's return to Japan, the country of her childhood where she finds the beauty of the landscapes, the peace of the rites of the country, the sadness of Fukushima, but especially, the arms of her Japanese nursemaid, Nishio San.[ In March 2015, she entered the Belgian "Académie royale", succeeding to Simon Leys. Link to Wikipedia biography