Fear and Trembling

Description

In this taut tour-de-force of a novel, an international bestseller, a young Western woman named Amelie spends a year working at a Japanese corporation. She soon learns that at the Yumimoto Corporation, hierarchy means everything. Keep to your place and you survive; break ranks and you will be broken. The determined but hapless Amelie makes mistake after mistake, not least of which is deigning to sympathise with her immediate superior, the beautiful, efficient and ice-cold Miss Mori. A perverse process of ritual humiliation follows. But even as Amelie's life at the Yumimoto Corporation spirals inexorably and hilariously downwards, what she learns about herself and her colleagues in this brilliant novel will alternately outrage and delight readers.

Amelie Nothomb was born in Kobe, Japan, and now lives in Paris. Her previous works include "The Stranger Next Door" and "Loving Sabotage".

"Elegantly written . . . Nothomb demonstrates a shrewd understanding of the intricate ways Japanese relationships are made and spoiled." --The New York Times Book Review "[A] polished little satire." --The Wall Street Journal "A scathingly funny novella." --Newsday (New York) "Amelie Nothomb adds humor, the ingredient most often missing in other writers from France of her generation, the ingredient most difficult to translate." --Los Angeles Times "An utterly charming, humorous tale of East meets West . . . Nothomb is a terrific writer whose writing style is simple, honest, and elegant. Very highly recommended." --Library Journal "A sharp, satiric new novel . . . Readers are sure to be won over by her spare, self-deprecating and wise tale." --Publishers Weekly "Highly entertaining . . . Fear and Trembling (a perfect title) is filled with both droll observations and wry bitch gags." --Kirkus Reviews "There can be no doubt about Amelie Nothomb's talent: her imagination, energy, facility, fertility, her edgy use of language all prove that she is a writer of enormous gifts. Her writing is as sharp as a whip, the perfect antidote to sleep-inducing novels. She wakes you up. She shakes you up . . . Fear and Trembling will keep readers entertained and on the edge of their seats until the final page." --Le Figaro "More than anything this is a beautiful love story--in which Sappho meets the Marquis de Sade." --Le Nouvel Observateur "Fear and Trembling is Nothomb at her finest. Never has she been so daring or inspired . . . This book is a small miracle. On second thought, no 'small' about it; it is plain and simple a miracle." --Le Point