Who is Amélie Nothomb? About the author of the book "Blue Beard" (video)

The Belgian francophone writer writes a lot, she has already written 64 novels. That is why she is also called the main graphoman of Europe. “I write a lot, it's true. But I don't like the word graphoman. Although yes, I am obsessed with writing. I am a writer. But the graphomaniacs write paper day and night as if they are crazy. Madder than me, anyway”.

Nothomb received a degree in Romance Languages at the French-speaking Open University of Brussels and left for Tokyo, but soon realized that the chosen profession was not what she dreamed of. She writes about this in her famous novel “Fear and Trembling”, which won the Grand Prize of the French Academy. She published a new novel every fall. “In my testament I specially emphasized. After my death, the world should not see any word from my unpublished works”.

The author of "Blue Beard" was born in Belgium. Her father, Baron Patrick Nothomb, was a diplomat, so the future novelist has lived in China, Japan, the United States, Laos, Burma, and Bangladesh since childhood. In 2015, King Philip awarded her the title of Baroness. "I am the daughter of a nobleman, but I didn't have a title. I could only get that if I got married, which is not even discussed. Just imagine. I am noble, and my father was deceived by it. Now I am Baroness Nothomb… alone as before”.

Amelie Nothomb lives in Paris and writes in French. She does not use a computer, she writes her novels with a pen, and she creates eight hours a day. According to her, she writes 3.7 novels in a year but publishes a quarter of them. The reason is that she has submitted only 16 novels to the reader's judgment. “Oscar Wilde said: everyone kills what they love. I think love is not something to learn, it should be by born. Everyone has had an unhappy love. Simply, over the years a person learns to control destructive impulses. I like to bring a person to the limit, to expose him, so to speak, to dissect him."

This is how Nothomb behaves with her literary heroes. Almost dissecting for the reader, revealing their inner world, showing the deepest and most hidden layers of human nature.