Fear and Trembling

Fear and Trembling is a satirical novel by Amélie Nothomb, first published in 1999 and translated into English by Adriana Hunter in 2001. It was awarded the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française that same year. Its original French title, Stupeur et tremblements, refers to the reverence which, according to the novel, a person must show in the presence of the Emperor, who until 1947 was considered a living god, although most Japanese today are unaware of this injunction.

The protagonist, Amélie, is a young Belgian woman who spent her early childhood in Japan and returns there as an adult on a one-year contract as a translator at the prestigious company Yumimoto. She hopes to live and work as a Japanese, but soon runs into a rigid hierarchy in which every employee answers to everyone above them. A chain of cultural misunderstandings causes her to sink down the corporate ladder rather than rise. Under the demanding Fubuki Mori, each attempt to take initiative ends in a reprimand. The novel is thus the story of a comic and cruel descent, in which the narrator refuses to resign in order to keep her honour, a notion that in Japan means not losing face.

The book works both as a satire of Japanese corporate life and as a portrait of the gap between the Western idea of individual responsibility and the Japanese one, in which a manager answers for the mistakes of the team. It was widely read in France and abroad, and was adapted into a film by Alain Corneau in 2003, with Sylvie Testud as Amélie, as well as into a stage play. It has been translated into many languages.