Phil

After reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery, I stumbled across this book, a translation by the same woman who translated Barbery's novel. I read two pages quickly, out of curiosity, and promptly fell in love. Tokyo Fiancee is the memoir of Amelie Nothomb and a brief relationship she had with a Japanese man while teaching French in Japan. It's completely disarming - particularly East-meets-West interludes like her boyfriend's clinical experiment with fondue - and as soon as I finished it, I bought and read two of her other titles. If you liked The Elegance of the Hedgehog, this is a short, charming follow-up.