First Blood

<p>WINNER OF THE 2021 RENAUDOT PRIZE<br>WINNER OF THE 2022 STREGA EUROPEAN PRIZE<br>A WORLD LITERATURE TODAY NOTABLE BOOK 2023</p><br><p>A moving fictionalized account of Nothomb's own father, who died of Covid related symptoms in early 2020, this is the acclaimed author's most personal and heartfelt novel.</p><br><p>The Republic of the Congo, 1964. A young man faces a firing squad, preparing for his last moment on Earth. He is known as a complex and complicated man whose childhood left him hungry for affection and attention and who transformed his emotional wounds into a brilliant career as a diplomat and a negotiator. Now he finds himself negotiating for his own life, together with the lives of 1,500 Congolese citizens.</p><br><p>Inspired by the life of her father and by her lifelong effort to understand him, Amélie Nothomb's new novel is about life-and-death decisions, about reckoning with one's past, reconciling with one's parents, and about the hard, often humorous work of determining one's own path.</p>