Peplum, Amélie Nothomb (review) Cheers to Amélie for keeping a book interesting with two characters and a beeline dialogue! I picked up this book at a friend's house, dived in and only emerged once done. It basically read itself. Nothomb is a very famous writer in France and Belgium, and because of that I avoided her for many years. I feared she my be some female version of Musso or Levy (who diverted me from modern French literature). All I knew about her was that she had peculiar sartorial style, wore funny hats and showed up on TV sets more often than a writer ought to be (by my standards). I'm glad my misconception turned up to be wrong about her. Not only did book had (almost) zero romance (definitely not a Musso) it was actually a Sci-Fi. It was clever, witty, engaging and called for some good healthy brain racking. I hadn't read enough (if any) Sci-Fi to know if each and every futuristic idea in the book is from her own invention but she sure knows how to put said ideas on paper and make them interesting to read.