Product Description

Here in its American debut edition, Loving Sabotage is the remarkable second novel by young Belgian literary phenomenon Amelie Nothomb. "I lived everything during these three years: heroism, glory, treachery, love, indifference, suffering, humiliation. It was in China, I was seven years old." 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 to 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #793151 in Books
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 144 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Readers who have yet to discover the feather-ruffling pleasures of reading popular Belgian author Nothomb (The Stranger Next Door), winner of the Prix du Roman de L'Academie Francaise and other prizes, should jump at the chance with this utterly disarming send-up of a precocious seven-year-old girl's collision with Communist China. Based on the author's experiences as the daughter of diplomats stationed in Peking (Beijing) from 1972 to 1975, the work is a frequently hilarious first-person account of an intrepid heroine who discovers life's ironies through the warped prism 0f CommunismDthat freedom springs from oppression and beauty blossoms where ugliness prevails. The narrator's family is warehoused in the foreigners' ghetto, San Li Tun, where the numerous unsupervised children of various nationalities spend their time fashioning an elaborate and ruthless game of war, designating the East German contingent as the enemy. When exquisite Elena, an unfeeling Italian six-year-old, arrives in the ghetto, the narrator's cheerful savagery is sabotaged by her obsessive love for the imperious beauty. While the narrator goes to ridiculous and heartrending lengths to make her adoration known to Elena, Nothomb interjects her brilliantly simple observations regarding the Communist regime: the running of a school art contest was like a "Rumanian electoral campaign"; the family's Chinese interpreter , Mr. Chang, disappears, only to be replaced by a woman who insists on being called Comrade Chang. With deadpan, ironical bite, Nothomb re-creates a child's insular, supremely egocentric world. While the Chinese setting is evocative, this short novel will benefit from targeting to any reader who is sympathetic to a child's view of the world. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Review of Arts, Lit, Philosophy, and the Humanities, Sandra MacPhearson, October/November 2000
[A]ble to convey the world of the young in spry and delightful ways.

Trenton Times, David Finkle, 3 December 2000
A charming, devious little book.

Customer Reviews

knights on horseback in a city of electric fans
Do you remember what it was like to be a child in a land of childish grown ups? When all concerns were life or death, and love was, literally, hearbreaking? Nothbomb's "Loving Sabotage" goes into the world of a seven year old girl living in Peking with her diplomat parents. Her experiences of world war with the germans, secret weapons, and her love affair with the six year old femme fatale Elena will make you laugh and remember the serious side of childhood. (wink!) This book is a quick read and Nothbomb's style is witty and delicious. Anyone who felt their childhood was a series of horrors, disappointments, battles, with the occasional upper hand will adore this book and the author herself.

THREE YEARS IN THE LIFE OF AN IGNORED CHILD
The narrator of Amelie Northomb's short novel is a young girl who has evidently been grossly ignored by her parents. She is the daughter of a diplomat stationed in China during the turbulent early 1970s -- her family, as well as the families of other foreign government workers, is isolated in what she calls a 'ghetto', cut off from the Chinese people. Her father's job is frustrating -- he is there to be the Belgian contact with the Chinese government, and to keep his country informed of what is going on in China, but the Chinese are not keen to let out much in the way of general information. Even the identities of Chinese cabinet ministers is treated as a secret.

In the midst of this atmosphere, young Amelie (and the author, in an afterword, maintains that the story is a true one, that even the names have not been changed) is pretty much left to fend for herself during the days. She rides her bicycle (she refers to it as her horse) through the Peking streets, offended that the Chinese guards at the compound gate do not see her as a threat to them. She has an active imagination -- one of the blessings of being seven years old -- and sees herself in vivid roles as a hero. The other children in the compound seem to be growing up the same way, and to amuse themselves, they engage in what they call a 'war' with the children of the East German diplomats.

With the arrival of a beautiful little girl named Elena, the child of an Italian diplomat and his South American wife, Amelie feels for the first time in her young life the magnetic pull of love for another person. She is entranced and obsessively infatuated with the little girl, who is cold and distant -- which only serves to make her more of an attraction. The lessons Amelie learns about love and friendship -- and the observations she shares with us of her world -- make this a touching, readable book. The feeling I was left with after reading it was one of sadness -- there's a lot of loneliness and heartbreak in this story, lessons that are tough to see a child learn by herself.

Nothomb's writing is a little choppy -- but that is most likely appropriate in this case, given the age of the narrator. In retrospect, I think it added some authenticity to that aspect of the story. I definitely want to read more of this author's work in order to gain a better perspective on her style and talents.