The latest addition to my website is Amélie Nothomb‘s Premier sang [First Blood]. The book starts with a man facing a firing squad and moves to his childhood in an unconventional Belgian aristocratic family. We gradually realise that it is, in fact, the story of Nothomb’s father, Patrick, a diplomat who served in the former Belgian Congo where he did, indeed, face a a firing squad. Patrick died last year (2020) so presumably Nothomb had to wait till he died to reveal some of his secrets or, perhaps, her imagined secrets, though the account is generally a very sympathetic one.