Psychopompe

A psychopomp in ancient mythology is a guide who escorts souls between life and death — Hermes, Charon, Orpheus, the swallow in many traditions. Nothomb uses the term to describe what birds, and then writing, served as for her: guides back from the edge of survival, companions at the boundary between living and not.

It is the most sustained and direct account she has published. Reviews of Psychopompe describe the Bangladesh section as the first extended treatment of this event in her published work, though earlier interviews had touched on the subject.

It forms the middle volume of a loose family triptych: Premier Sang (2021) covers her father Patrick; Psychopompe (2023) covers her own story; and Tant mieux (2025) covers her mother Juliette's childhood. They are independent novels with overlapping biographical material.

Birds appear at every significant moment of Nothomb's childhood — in Japan, in Bangladesh, in the stories her nanny told. They are also psychopomps in many mythological traditions: creatures that move between the human world and whatever lies beyond. The choice of birds as the memoir's organizing image connects her biography to the mythology.

Writing did not eliminate the trauma but it provided a direction — away from the edge, back toward something livable. Nothomb describes this in terms of the psychopomp's function: not to answer the question of why terrible things happen but to guide the person through the territory that follows.

Content warnings apply: the book describes sexual assault (gang rape at age twelve) directly and without ellipsis. Readers who find this content distressing should be aware before beginning.

Biographie de la faim (2004) covers much of the same childhood geography but focuses on hunger — appetite in all its forms — as the organizing principle. Psychopompe returns to the same period with different emphasis: the Bangladesh rape, which Biographie de la faim does not address in the same depth.