Aerostats. First Blood

A collection of tragic novels by a world-famous writer. The images of the characters are based on real people and real destinies.

Brilliant Amélie Nothomb, the Belgian writer with worldwide fame, releases a novel every year. This book includes the last two—her twenty-ninth and thirtieth—both of which are partly autobiographical.

“Airships” is the story of a Brussels student named Angé. Taking a job giving literature lessons to a lycée graduate, she finds herself in a strange, almost unreal atmosphere of a wealthy mansion, where her sixteen-year-old pupil is kept effectively locked up. Reading great books brings them closer. Both struggle to find their place in modern life and, in some way, resemble the old airships that a teenage boy—the one enamored of his teacher—becomes obsessed with. “Angé is me at nineteen,” Nothomb confessed in one of her interviews.

“First Blood” is a novel about the writer’s father, a senior diplomat who died suddenly in 2020. Captured by Congolese rebels, young Belgian consul Patrick Nothomb faces a firing squad, waiting for execution, and recalls every minute of the twenty-eight years of his life—childhood, youth, love. Amélie seems to look at the world through her father’s eyes, and by recreating his confession turns it into a thriller. The novel was awarded the Prix Renaudot in France and, in Italy, one of Europe’s main literary honors—the Strega Prize.