First Blood

WINNER OF THE 2021 RENAUDOT PRIZE

WINNER OF THE 2022 STREGA EUROPEAN PRIZE

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.

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.

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.