Amélie Nothomb: Authorship, Identity and Narrative Practice

Susan Bainbrigge, Jeanette den Toonder, Amélie Nothomb. Autorship, Identity and Narrative Practice, Peter Lang USA, 2003, 234 p.

ISBN: 0-8204-6182-2

About the book:

Since the publication of her first novel in 1992, Amélie Nothomb continues to engage and to provoke her readers through her exploration of the fluid boundaries between beauty and monstrosity, good and evil, fable and reality, as well as by her fascinating presentation of childhood, anorexia, and the abject. In Amélie Nothomb: Authorship, Identity and Narrative Practice, the first full-length study in English of Nothomb's work, these elements are presented and interpreted from a variety of perspectives, with the contributors focusing on a single novel or comparing different texts. Comprised of a collection of essays on her autobiographical and fictional works, with contributions from her anglophone translators, it also includes an interview with the author, a preface by the eminent writer and critic, Jacques de Decker and a bibliography of secondary works. Nothomb's works and the critical responses to them are contextualized in a general introduction and organized under the following key themes: autobiography and gender identity, representations of the body, and narrative practice. This collection is an essential resource for students and scholars of twentieth-century contemporary literature and gender studies.

About the authors:

Susan Bainbrigge is Lecturer in French at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Her research interests include twentieth-century French literature, in particular women's writing, feminist theory, autobiography studies, francophone writing, and women in politics. She is the author of articles on Simone de Beauvoir's autobiographies, feminist theory, and the ‘parité' debate.

A former Lecturer in French at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, Jeanette den Toonder is currently Lecturer in the Department of Romance Languages and Cultures at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Her research interests include contemporary French and francophone literature, focusing on the contemporary novel in Quebec, the autobiographical genre and questions of identity. She is the author of "Qui est-je?": L'écriture autobiographique des nouveaux romanciers, as well as numerous articles.