Amélie Nothomb wins the Renaudot 2021 prize for “First blood”

A new award for Amélie Nothomb. The Belgian novelist won for the first time, Wednesday November 3, the Renaudot Prize with her thirty-second novel, First blood (Albin Michel). In front of her, three rivals were in the running: Anne Berest with Postcard (Grasset), Nicolas Chemla with Dark Murnau (Cherche-Midi) and Abel Quentin with The Seer of Etampes (The editions of the Observatory).

The best-selling author was elected in the 2nd round, with 6 votes. The Renaudot of the essay was awarded to In my street there were three shops (Presses de la Cité) by Anthony Palou, said Franz-Olivier Giesbert, one of the Renaudot jurors.

In her new novel, the author gives voice to her father, Ambassador Patrick Nothomb, through a first-person narrative. “Losing your father is a ordeal (…) but not being able to go to his funeral (…) it was terrible”, she confided, at the microphone of France 2.

The story : Amélie Nothomb slips into the skin of her father. The latter, who became a narrator, recounts his childhood in the 1940s, through the eyes of a boy. Sweet Patrick – marked by the death of his father and his mother’s disenchantment – was brought up by his maternal grandparents, in an aristocratic environment. A childhood interspersed with stays with his paternal grandfather, Pierre Nothomb. Spartan stays with a downright Darwinian education, alongside a horde of savage children. Something to toughen up Patrick who, once an adult, must survive a hostage-taking in the Congo.

“There really I want to say: daddy, we have the price!”, exclaimed Amélie Nothomb, at the Drouant restaurant in Paris, where the Goncourt and the Renaudot were announced.

Since his first book Hygiene of the assassin in 1992, the Belgian writer with Gothic hats wrote tirelessly, publishing every year in August and with the same frenzy, a work with almost constant popular success. Endowed with gargantuan productivity, a media creature as much adulated as criticized, Amélie Nothomb found in words enough to quench her existential thirst.

The 55-year-old author claims to write between three and four novels a year and only publish one. “The others will never be disclosed. I have made testamentary arrangements for this.”