Aventure de l’écriture, écriture de l’aventure. Corporéité et construction identitaire chez Amélie Nothomb
The adventure of writing, the writing of adventure. Corporeality and the construction of the self in the novels of Amélie Nothomb

Summary/Abstract: A must-read author of contemporary fiction, Amélie Nothomb is on a never-ending quest for selfhood, both in real life and in her writing. It is a two-fold adventure, ontological as well as aesthetical, that underpins an intensely autobiographic fictional architecture, following Nothomb’s cosmopolitan journey and her gradual awareness of her vocation as a writer. One must reinvent oneself constantly; one must discover in oneself the possibility of freedom, and commit oneself to the avoidance of everything and anything that might prevent the full enjoyment of freedom. This subtle perception of freedom, of which the body is a sensitive gauge, often makes her inhabit multiple sensory worlds. Nothomb is most herself when at odds with a radical otherness which she strives to grasp and which enables her to perceive the irredeemably strange as well as the most intimately familiar. The overwhelming presence of Japanese reality in Nothomb’s writing is due not only to the author’s actual background, but also to an overarching cultural experience that verges on obsession. Cases in point are novels such as Biographie de la faim, Stupeur et tremblements, Ni d’Ève ni d’Adam, mapping the way in which intercultural development can shape a most fascinating destiny and creative identity.

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