Telephone conversation with the author after the proclamation of the Renaudot Prize awarded to her book First blood.
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Amélie Nothomb. © Belgaimage
What state of mind and state are you after receiving this award?
I’m not going back down. The first night I slept for an hour. Last night, I slept two hours, and yet I am in great shape. Champagne is the basis of my diet …
After drinking champagne for two nights, I hear that you have kept your lucidity …
My dear Sébastien, nothing replaces experience. (To laugh.)
I especially hear that you are very far in joy …
In pure joy, with the certainty that it could not have been better. This price makes everything so meaningful. For example, if I had had the Goncourt two years ago (in 2019, she was a finalist for Soif, a novel about Jesus – Editor’s note), I would never have been able to have this prize, because after the Goncourt, it was is over, we never have literary prizes again. This book had to be crowned, I tell myself it’s too perfect.
This book – First Blood – is not just any book… It is your thirtieth novel and it evokes your father – the diplomat Patrick Nothomb who died last year…
Somehow, I’m sure my dad is cheering. My father was very sensitive to this kind of congratulations. And these congratulations are addressed to him as well as to me.
This Renaudot rewards a Belgian story, in a Belgian setting with such Belgian characters. Le Goncourt for The most secret memory of men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr rewards the book of an author of Senegalese origin who writes French with impressive sumptuousness.
You win these prizes, each in your own way, with Eric Zemmour’s beard.
(Laughs.) Exactly! It’s too true… We are neither French. I am also reading Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s book and it is excellent.
Did you receive any awards at school?
Not at all. When I was little, I was a good student; teenager, it was a lot less good… I was the one who was hailed for her translations into Greek and Latin, you can imagine the fossil that I was, but for everything else, I was really not one of the brilliant beings .
No moral prize? No companionship award?
No. I wasn’t anyone’s friend… I don’t think I knew it, I was a punk.
Basically, are you interested in literary prizes?
I can’t say that it leaves me indifferent, it intrigued me. When I was young, I saw the candidates for the literary prizes on TV and I found these manners quite strange, but I could not have imagined that they would concern me one day.
Your mother’s reaction?
Crazy of joy! For my mother, my book is not called First blood most “the book about Patrick”. When I go to La grande librairie for First blood, she says “the show on patrick”…
Are you going to share this prize at your father’s grave?
Certainly. This winter, as soon as I have the opportunity, I will bring a large Renaudot red band and hang it on his grave …
Premier Sang, Albin Michel, 173 p.
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