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Synopsis
A stunningly funny novel about the gap between East and West, and the story of a young woman who falls straight into it.
Winner of the Grand Prix de l'Academie Franç:aise and the Prix Internet du Livre, this taut tour-de-force of a novel created a sensation in France, where it has sold nearly half a million copies. Fear and Trembling tells the story of Amelie, a young Western woman who spends a year working at a Japanese corporation. She soon learns that at theYumimoto 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 sympathize 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 theYumimoto Corporation spirals inexorably and hilariously downward, what she learns about herself and her colleagues in this brilliant novel will alternately delight and outrage readers. Not since Marguerite Duras has a novelist so indelibly marked the differences between East and West, and with such seductive honesty.
About the Author:
Amelie Nothomb was born in Kobe, Japan and now lives in Paris. Her previous works include The Stranger Next Door and Loving Sabotage.
Kirkus Reviews
Highly entertaining Fear and Trembling (a perfect title) is filled with both droll observations and wry bitch gags.