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She is the most eccentric of Belgian authors. For 20 years, there has not been a literary comeback without her: the editorial staff of 13 Heures met Amélie Nothomb who has just received the Renaudot prize for her book “Premier sang”.
It was at the Belgian embassy in Paris that the editorial staff of the 13 Heures met Amélie Nothomb a month before she received the Renaudot prize. In his thirtieth novel, First blood, she brings her father, Patrick Nothomb, back to life by slipping into the clothes of future ambassadors. It is a biographical novel that looks like a fairy tale. An office that “could have been his. It’s very moving. My father was an ambassador as one can idealize it, he was incredibly devoted”, says Amélie Nothomb.
His father was part of the “biggest hostage-taking of the twentieth century”, in Congo. “There were 1,600 white hostages, and my father saved the lives of the vast majority of them.” His father died in early 2020, is this novel a way of saying goodbye to him? “Losing your father is a ordeal (…) but not being able to go to his funeral (…) it was terrible”, remembers the author, moved.