Amélie NothombLiterary Fiction · Contemporary Literature·b. 1966
Le crime du comte Neville
Synopsis
Every year Count Henri de Neville hosts a New Year's Eve celebration at his Belgian castle. Every year his guests expect it.
But this year the count has reached a decision: he intends to commit a murder before midnight — a plan drawn directly from Oscar Wilde's story 'The Crime of Lord Arthur Savile,' in which a young man is told his destiny by a palmist and resolves to fulfil it and be done with it.
What distinguishes the count's version is the particular victim he chooses, and the philosophical architecture he constructs to justify the choice. His children, named Oreste and Électre, bear the weight of their mythological references with full awareness.
Nothomb uses the Wilde source material as scaffolding for a meditation on obligation, inheritance, and the strange freedom that comes from deciding one's fate in advance. Published in 2015 by Albin Michel.
How it reads
Prose complexity 2/10
Genres
Characters
Henri de NevilleProtagonist
A Belgian count who has resolved to commit a murder at his own New Year's Eve celebration, reasoning from a Wildean logic of destiny rather than from malice.
SérieuseSupporting
A character at the gathering whose function counterpoints the count's elaborate philosophical self-justification.
OresteSupporting
The count's son, named after the Greek figure whose fate was determined by his family's history — a name the novel wears consciously.
ÉlectreSupporting
The count's daughter, named alongside her brother for the Oresteia — both children carry their mythological names as a form of inheritance.
Subjects
Frequently asked questions
Which Oscar Wilde story does this novel adapt?
'The Crime of Lord Arthur Savile' (1887), in which a young man is told by a palmist that he is destined to commit murder and decides to get it over with before his wedding. Nothomb transplants the premise to a Belgian aristocratic household and refracts it through her own philosophical concerns about obligation and choice.
When was Le crime du comte Neville published?
Published in 2015 by Albin Michel. It was Nothomb's twenty-third novel.
Why are the count's children named Oreste and Électre?
Oreste (Orestes) and Électre (Electra) are the children of Agamemnon in Greek tragedy — a family defined by inherited violence and unavoidable destiny. The count's children bear those names as a conscious declaration of the family's self-understanding: they are a household in which fate operates as a structural principle.
Is Le crime du comte Neville a crime novel?
Only incidentally. The murder is announced in the first pages and the novel is not interested in suspense or detection. It is more accurately a philosophical comedy about the decision to act, the choice of victim, and the peculiar dignity of announcing one's intentions before carrying them out.
Does the count actually commit the murder?
How does this fit within Nothomb's career?
It belongs to the strand of her work — alongside Attentat and Le fait du prince — that takes a morally compromised protagonist with a rigorous internal logic and follows that logic to its conclusion without flinching. The Wildean source material suits Nothomb's taste for paradox and aesthetic precision.
