| Loving Sabotage Contributor(s): Nothomb, Amelie (Author), Wilson, Andrew (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0811217825 ISBN-13: 9780811217828 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation OUR PRICE: $15.15 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: November 2000 Annotation: So announces the narrator of Loving Sabotage, Amelie Nothomb's critically acclaimed novel about a young girl who seems already stripped of illusions. The daughter of diplomats posted in Peking for three years in the mid-seventies, our unnamed narrator charges about her tightly enclosed world of the concrete ghetto of San Li Tun on her "horse" -- her bicycle -- with the dictatorial clarity and loneliness of a warrior-philosopher. "From puberty onwards", she announces at one point, "life is just an epilogue". On the battlefield of an asphalt playground, in between "wars" with the children of other nations, she discovers her first love: six-year-old Elena, her coldly indifferent "Helen of Troy". But she soon learns life's hardest rule: if she wants to be loved, she must be cruel in return. A fast, furious -- and often hilarious -- novel of childhood infatuation and intuited truths, Loving Sabotage chronicles one girl's precocious understanding of the struggles and pains of adult life. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Coming Of Age - Fiction | Political |
| Dewey: FIC |
| Series: New Directions Paperbook |
| Physical Information: 0.34" H x 5" W x 7.99" (0.36 lbs) 144 pages |
| Themes: - Topical - Adolescence/Coming of Age |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: "I lived everything daring those three years: heroism, glory, treachery, love, indifference, suffering, humiliation. It was China; I was seven years old." So announces the narrator of Loving Sabotage, Amélie Nothomb's critically acclaimed novel about a young girl who seems already stripped of illusions. The daughter of diplomats posted to Peking in the mid-seventies, she charges about the grim confines of the gated government enclave battling tirelessly against boredom, concocting a fantasy life as rich as her surroundings are bleak. During one of her tours of duty in a war that has broken out in the ghetto between the children of various nations, she encounters a young Italian girl, Elena: beautiful, aloof, disdainful of silly games. The narrator is instantly infatuated and comes to realize the only fight worthy of her attention is shattering Elena's indifference. Provocative, outrageous, and caustically funny, Loving Sabotage recounts a precocious girl's understanding of the struggles and pains of adult life. |
Contributor Bio(s): Wilson, Andrew: - Andrew Wilson is a graduate of the Master of Philosophy Program in Literary Translation at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He lives in Berkeley, California. |