A true star of bookstores, the novelist Amélie Nothomb pleases thanks to her inimitable literary style and her unique personality. Accustomed to outspokenness, she recently spoke about… her will.
It’s in the Lou Media podcast, Rebornwhich the popular Belgian novelist Amélie Nothomb recently agreed to share. While his latest book, entitled So much the betterdetails the death of her mother and addresses the mourning of a parent, the successful writer revealed her post-mortem wishes…
Amélie Nothomb wrote it in black and white in her will: “Out of the question!“
The last wishes of the novelist, now aged 59, will disappoint her thousands of fans… Indeed, when asked about the future of her unpublished novels – she claims to have piles of manuscripts ready in her drawers, while she publishes at the frantic pace of one book per year – once she has disappeared, Amélie Nothomb made it known that she did not want them to be published after her death. “Out of the question!”she even chanted. And the goose that lays the golden eggs at the Albin Michel publishing house, where she actually has an office, adds: “Besides, I said it in my will: there is no question that my unpublished manuscripts will be published upon my death”.
On the other hand, Fabienne Claire Nothomb, her real name, does not want her works to be destroyed either. “It is out of the question that they are destroyed, since they are my children as much as the others and no mother can want her children to be destroyed. And I do not want that. So it must be saved while being inaccessible”she said.
“The double protection that I ended up finding…“
It remains to be seen how. But Amélie Nothomb has already thought of everything for her literary legacy: “The double protection that I ended up finding by consulting people more intelligent than me: firstly, to cast the unpublished manuscripts in a block of resin. And then, to bequeath the block of resin to the Hell of the Vatican Library which seems to me a trustworthy place.”
“Because I no longer trust Space, there are so many people wandering around in Space, it’s no longer a good hiding place”quipped the one who also refuses that anyone read her books after her death. In the meantime, she enjoys her success and continues to spend all the money earned from her books on her second passion: that of champagne.
