Nothomb is certainly victorious. Not only is the story compelling, the prose is exceptional.

— Review of Contemporary Fiction
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Portrait of Amélie Nothomb
Amélie Nothomb

Amélie Nothomb

Since the appearance in 1992 of Hygiene de l’assassin, an overnight bestseller in France, Belgian novelist Amélie Nothomb (1967- ) has become a literary phenomenon worldwide, translated in twenty-six languages and awarded numerous prizes. She was born in Kobe, Japan in 1967 to diplomat parents and spent her childhood in Bangladesh, Burma, Laos, New York, and China. She now lives in Brussels and Paris and once held the world record for the fastest descent from Mount Fuji: 3,776 meters in forty minutes.

cover image of the book Loving Sabotage

Loving Sabotage

by Amélie Nothomb

“I lived everything daring those three years: heroism, glory, treachery, love, indifference, suffering, humiliation. It was China; I was seven years old.” So announces the narrator of Loving Sabotage, Amélie Nothomb’s critically acclaimed novel about a young girl who seems already stripped of illusions. The daughter of diplomats posted to Peking in the mid-seventies, she charges about the grim confines of the gated government enclave battling tirelessly against boredom, concocting a fantasy life as rich as her surroundings are bleak. During one of her tours of duty in a war that has broken out in the ghetto between the children of various nations, she encounters a young Italian girl, Elena: beautiful, aloof, disdainful of silly games. The narrator is instantly infatuated and comes to realize the only fight worthy of her attention is shattering Elena’s indifference. Provocative, outrageous, and caustically funny, Loving Sabotage recounts a precocious girl’s understanding of the struggles and pains of adult life.

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Nothomb is certainly victorious. Not only is the story compelling, the prose is exceptional.

— Review of Contemporary Fiction

Mon Dieu!

— Elle
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