Original scientific paper
Searching for a Homeland. Belgium in Amelie Nothomb's Writings
Nausicaa Dewez
; Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Bruxelles
Abstract
The essay interrogates the way Amélie Nothomb’s Belgian identity expresses itself in her works and mainly in her autobiographical novels. At first the novelist describes herself as Japanese, as she spent the first years of her life in Japan, rejecting Belgium at the same time. But then as she experiments rejection from Japan, she writes about a feeling of void and statelessness. Belgium, which she pictures as an unmarked country and a land without qualities, appears therefore as the one that suits best her own state of mind. Hence her claiming that she is Belgian.
Nothomb is therefore part of an inquiry into the meaning of the Belgian identity, which has always been quite common in French-speaking Belgian literature.
Keywords
statelessness; autobiography; France; Japan; calling
Hrčak ID:
170359
URI
Publication date:
7.11.2016.
Visits: 1.432 *