Vous voulez voir cette page en français ? Cliquez ici.

 

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
More Buying Choices
12 used & new from CDN$ 5.75
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
Sulphuric Acid
 
See larger image 
Share your own customer images
Publisher: learn how customers can search inside this book.

Sulphuric Acid (Hardcover)

by Amelie Nothomb (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
List Price: CDN$ 26.00
Price: CDN$ 16.38 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 39. Details
You Save: CDN$ 9.62 (37%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Usually ships within 4 to 6 weeks.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca. Gift-wrap available.

Ordering for Christmas?? This item requires additional time to ship and will arrive after December 25. Need a last-minute gift? Send an Amazon.ca Gift Certificate.

7 new from CDN$ 5.75 5 used from CDN$ 6.27

Product Details

Product Description

Product Description

Tired of traditional reality shows, the television audience wants blood, literally. One day, while out taking a walk in the Jardin des Plantes, Pannonique is piled into a cattle-truck. Suddenly, it seems, anyone can be picked up and hauled off to the studio without a moment's notice. Set in an unspecified time, "Sulphuric Acid" tells the story of this reality TV death camp which has become the nation's obsession - an amoral spectacle played out through the media - as we follow the shifting fortunes of Pannonique and her nemesis, the guard Zdena. A huge bestseller in her adopted France, it once again shows the unique voice and imagination of Amelie Nothomb.


About the Author

Belgian by nationality, Amelie Nothomb was born in Kobe, Japan, and currently lives in Paris. She is the bestselling author of fifteen novels, translated into thirty languages. Her UK debut, The Book of Proper Names, was published to considerable acclaim in 2004.

Tag this product

 (What's this?)
Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.
Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags
 

Customer Reviews

1 Review
5 star:    (0)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most helpful customer reviews

 
4.0 out of 5 stars Media Rage, Aug 24 2007
Amélite Nothomb's "Sulfuric Acid" is a short fictional account of a TV reality show called "Concentration" in which the production team keeps people imprisoned and under surveillance. Selected at random, subjects are moved to the TV sets to be beaten and humiliated to a pulp by other prisoners who play the role of Kapos with the goal of increasing audience rates. The title of the show means in two very different, yet bizarrely interrelated ways: on the one hand, it evokes the space of the concentration camp where the subjects dwell; on the other, it alludes in veiled manner to the perversly delicious concentration with which every week members of the audience vote from the comfort of their homes on the issue of whether or not to execute one of the prisoners.

Ms. Nothomb's short tale routinely weds rage and media as one unit to create an inescapable level of reality in the New World Order of "Sulfuric Acid," which has succumbed, tragically, to the comforts of immediate (and ironically unmediated) gratification of visuality. In it, the prisoners' names and identities are gradually erased with the degradation of the beatings and humiliations as cameras capture every single step, to yield a number and another potential sacrificial lamb to be offered to the gods of media rage: voyeurism, virtuality, rat-racing, demoralization and the powerful immorality of the remote control.

Satiric, realistic, somber, and deeply cynical, this book represents a step comparable to those taken by Graham Greene in the exploration of the novelist's experience, only this time Ms. Nothomb treads fearlessly the virtual reality of the most brutal rage that can be exposed in global mass media. This novel wildly satirizes the world of mass media in ways reminiscent of how Ray Bradbury's "Farenheit 451" spoke of the demise of the printed page and Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" revisited reproductive health and rights, presenting readers with an eerie reality that is only logically possible in the plane of science fiction, while all along it promises that it can happen to you any day now. In more ways than one, this book is a virtual twin soul to Alejandro Amenábar's film "Tesis" in which the snuff film industry was exposed as a clear and present danger whose immediacy nobody could believe.

This is Ms. Nothomb's twentieth novel, and she has published three more since 2005. Great, provocative read from this prolific young author. No comfy chair, for it.

NOTE: The English translation by Faber comes out at the end of September 25; hence, this review is based on Sergi Pàmies's translation into Spanish published by the Barcelona publishing house Anagrama earlier this year.
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
Only search this product's reviews


Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject










i.e., each book must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.