Diane is raised by a mother so plagued by jealousy of her own daughter that she is incapable of showing affection to her. Despite this, Diane grows up to become a brilliant young woman who rejects societal expectations. She forges her own path, dismissing suitors and pursuing her dream of becoming a cardiologist. At university, she befriends the assistant professor Olivia. Intelligent and cold, Olivia’s ambition and need to feel superior to others drags Diane down to a dark place. This is the story of Diane’s relationships with other women: her best friend, the sweet Élisabeth; her mentor, the selfish Olivia; her sister, the coddled Célia; and, of course, her mother, Marie. Nothomb balances light-hearted observations with crushing revelations, exposing the spectrum of female bonds. Strike Your Heart takes a philosophical look at jealousy, contempt, loss, betrayal, and above it all, the capacity for forgiveness. With her trademark wit, brevity, and tightly wound plots, Nothomb, one of Europe’s most acclaimed and beloved authors, has crafted an insightful story about a modern heroine who will linger in the minds of readers long after the final page.
Author
Amélie Nothomb, born Fabienne Claire Nothomb, was born in Etterbeek, Belgium on 9 July 1966, to Belgian diplomats. Although Nothomb claims to have been born in Japan, she actually began living in Japan at the age of two until she was five years old. Subsequently, she lived in China, New York, Bangladesh, Burma, the United Kingdom (Coventry) and Laos. She is from a distinguished Belgian political family; she is notably the grand-niece of Charles-Ferdinand Nothomb, a Belgian foreign minister (1980-1981). Her first novel, Hygiène de l'assassin, was published in 1992. Since then, she has published approximately one novel per year with a.o. Les Catilinaires (1995), Stupeur Et Tremblements (1999) and Métaphysique des tubes (2000). She has been awarded numerous prizes, including the 1999 Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française; the Prix René-Fallet; and twice the Prix Alain-Fournier. While in Japan, she attended a local school and learned Japanese. When she was five the family moved to China. "Quitter le Japon fut pour moi un arrachement" ("Leaving Japan was a wrenching separation for me") she writes in Fear and Trembling. Nothomb moved often, and did not live in Europe until she was 17, when she moved to Brussels. There, she reportedly felt as much a stranger as everywhere else. She studied philology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. After some family tensions, she returned to Japan to work in a big Japanese company in Tokyo. Her experience of this time is told in Fear and Trembling. She has written a romanticized biography (Robert des noms propres) for the French female singer RoBERT in 2002 and during the period 2000-2002 she wrote the lyrics for nine tracks of the same artist. Many ideas inserted in her books come from the conversations she had with an Italian man, from late eighties and during the nineties. She used the French Minitel, while he used the Italian Videotel system, connected with the French one. They never met personally. Source: Wikipedia
