Sulphuric Acid [2005/2007] – ★★★★
This book is by a Belgian author Amélie Nothomb, who was born in Japan, but now resides in Paris. Translated from the French by Shaun Whiteside, Sulphuric Acid is a short novella which quite shockingly and darkly satirises our obsession with TV, in particular with reality television, and our idolisation of celebrities. Probably taking some inspiration from Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale (1999), Sulphuric Acid is a dystopia-set story in which millions of people tune in every night for a TV programme called Concentration, which recreates a Nazi-style concentration camp with real participants. People in this programme take either the roles of guards or prisoners, with cameras catching their every move. Nothomb packs a lot of ideas into her novella of just over 120 pages, and she is very interested to explore human responses to some unthinkable situations, as we follow the main characters – a beautiful young woman Pannonique, one of the prisoners, and sadistic Zdena, one of the guards.
In this story, a TV programme Concentration knows no boundaries when it comes to “entertaining” its audience as it puts its “participants” through a real concentration camp simulation with real suffering and death experienced by many. People in this story were taken from streets and assigned randomly as prisoners, while other people, such as capo Zdena, went through tests and interviews to be assigned as guards. Those who think the premise is far-fetched may just recall gladiator battles in the Roman Empire or the Stanford Prison Experiment – both were no fiction. Philip Zimbardo conducted the Prison Experiment among college students in 1971, where people were assigned the roles of prisoners and guards randomly, and the alleged conclusion was that people quickly assume their assigned roles under one unquestionable authority, and some people suffered extreme psychological torture inflicted by assigned “guards” who had the order to command “prisoners” and “punish” them harshly for any disobedience (see also the related Milgram experiment).
However, Sulphuric Acid has another dimension to it, since the camp in the story is filled with video cameras and audiences at home can watch events happening within the prison walls. In this way, the author tries to demonstrate the consequences of a society’s boundless obsession with reality television and we get to understand the true meaning of the word “telegenic”. The issue is very topical nowadays. The popularity of Dutch-originated Big Brother, and also of the Survival programme and talk shows such as British Jeremy Kyle, become a bit questionable when people view episodes involving other people being verbally abused so that they are “entertained” (otherwise, the episodes are “boring”). In May 2019, a contestant on the British Jeremy Kyle Show – Steve Dymond – committed suicide after the filming of his episode on the show, and the cause of his demise was proved to be directly linked to his appearance on the show. Previous Love Island reality show contestants Mike Thalassitis and Sophie Gradon also took their own lives in 2019 and 2018 respectively, and not long after appearing on the show. Instead of feeling sympathy and compassion for another human being, some participants on these shows are designated as “idiots” and put to shame, with audiences supposedly taking pleasure in dissecting other people’s vulnerabilities and private affairs. The presence of the screen also makes the complicity of the audience non-existent.
Going back to the book, on this background of the Concentration TV programme, we find beautiful, intelligent and courageous Pannonique, previously a student of palaeontology, who stoically endures her experience of being a prisoner in the camp. She somehow gets the harshest treatment from the guards and the reasons are clear: “[The camera] knew that it was in the interests of Concentration to display to the maximum the beauty of that tormented humanity. So it was that it quickly chose Pannonique” [Amélie Nothomb, 2005/07: 11]. We also get to know one of the ruthless guards – Capo Zdena – as well as her growing obsession with Pannonique. “What’s normality? What are good and evil? It’s all cultural”, according to Zdena [Nothomb, 2005/07: 8]. In these circumstances (harsh labour, no freedom and daily beatings), even small actions signalling defiance are big acts of courage. Also, it seems that a society in the book is such that the presence of a camera or a full report of despicable events somehow makes the actions of the organisers of the programme justifiable.
The curious element of the novella is that we discover the real horror of the programme – what the prisoners have to endure at the camp – in an indirect manner, as though, like the audience watching this programme, what is important is the camera’s point of view and the “characters”, and not the gruesome actions people are subjected to or the abhorrent nature of the programme itself. Perhaps even the not-so-fully-fledged characters are a point of this story since the facelessness of reality television makes it even more “acceptable” in the eyes of many. Amélie Nothomb also makes it clear that “knowledge is power”, and makes a particular emphasis on one’s name being very important to one’s identity and self-worth. The thesis here is that names are important to human beings, and they make us valuable individuals in our eyes and in the eyes of others – “not for nothing do human beings bear names rather than numbers: the first name is the key to the personality. It is the delicate click of the lock when you want to open the door. It’s the metallic music that makes the gift possible” [Nothomb, 2005/07: 72]. All prisoners in the camp in the story are nameless and are assigned numbers (Pannonique is CKZ 114, and her friends are MDA 802 and EPJ 327); it becomes easier to mistreat them this way.
Amélie Nothomb’s factual and “economical” writing suits her story well and some of her statements are thought-provoking: “when a name is a rampant and its impregnability intoxicates, it’s called love” [Nothomb, 2005/07: 40] and “it is when his absence is most glaring that God is most necessary” [Nothomb, 2005/07: 44]. On the negative side, I sometimes find novellas and short stories rather underwhelming (The Yellow Wallpaper, I Have the Right to Destroy Myself), and Sulphuric Acid also felt this way for me. The novella also has a more or less predictable ending.
Amélie Nothomb has been called “a charming little monster” (Financial Times) and for a good reason – Sulphuric Acid is dark and unsettling in its content, but, despite its short length, it still packs a punch and is rather thought-provoking. Perhaps, given the rising popularity of reality television in this and last decades, as well as the recent questions asked about the ethics (lack of them) behind them, we can only too well now imagine what might be the extreme case of human interest to observe the problems and pain of others. In this sense, Sulphuric Acid is one dystopian novella that sends out a powerful warning about humans’ relentless and obsessive pursuit of screen thrills and their insatiable curiosity about others that can result in them forgetting the most basic principles of humanity.
You’re reading some unusual titles…I wonder, how do you choose the books you read?
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What is “unusual” in one country is “popular” in another 🙂 I read all kinds of fiction, but I like to review translated from another language books, and forgotten or little known works because I want to draw attention to these kinds of books. There are gems to discover and most of them are under-read and underappreciated.
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It’s a big wide world….
I’ve always liked the idea of choosing your next book from books mentioned in the book you’re reading. To Dante’s Divine Comedy from the Zorba the Greek…or to Einstein’s Dreams from Hitchen’s ‘Mortality’… Always interested in how readers find books in any case…
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Yes, that is interesting too. I love to discover books that way too, but it does not happen often. I think there was a mention of Zola’s “Germinal” in “Half a Lifelong Romance”, but I read that one already. I sometimes search for books to read in goodreads.
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Good question! Thanks for asking it.
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Have you got to Montaigne’s Collected Essays? They featured often in A Gentleman in Moscow and I’d like to get them…. despite their heft!
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Great review! I’ve been keen to try Nothomb for a while and was hoping to start with this one, so I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it.
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Thanks! This was my first Nothomb as well. I liked it and want to read her debut “Hygiene and the Assassin” now. I am looking forward to reading your opinion on the book as well.
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Hi! Let me start by saying that this is a great review and I’m glad to see that you loved the book, and I also have this one in my TBR list. I’ve read two books by this author, and I have to say that I really need to read more books by Amélie Nothomb.
By the way, I wouldn’t say that this books isn’t unusual in any way shape or form, to say the least, Amélie Nothomb is a very popular author in Spain, and I would say that you can find almost her entire bibliography translated into Spanish.
Kind regards!
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Hello! Thanks for reading! Did you like the two books you read by her? I think one of the main reasons I chose to read Sulphuric Acid is because of the concept – a reality TV show mirroring a concentration camp – and not because of the author, but now I really want to read some of her other books simply because I liked her ideas and style. You have just given me an idea of looking for her other books in Spanish and reading her in Spanish now. I love Spanish, and I am now jealous people reading her in Spanish lol 🙂 And I agree, I imagine she is very popular in France in particular and in some other European countries.
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Yes, I did. I read ‘Riquete el del Copete’ and ‘El crimen del conde Neville’, and I would say that you can easily read the first one in Spanish, because it’s also a short novella and the language in it is quite easy to understand. Her publisher in Spain is Editorial Anagrama (anagrama-ed.es/autor/nothomb-amelie-792).
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They also published Amélie’s books in Catalan, so be aware of that.
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Thanks a lot for these recommendations! I need to track them down now. And, yes that is precisely why I also want to read them in Spanish – they are not long and the language is more or less straightforward.
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Je n’ai pas encore eu la chance de lire ce livre d’Amélie Nothomb.
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C’est très interessant! J’espère que tu aura l’occasion de le lire.
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This book does bring up some interesting points, even in the real world. Obviously, the book makes the TV show much more brutal then real life, but reality TV in general is so twisted. I’ve tried watching some of the popular reality shows, but they just disturb me. People are real but they aren’t, and often times being on one episode of a show can change their lives forever. Add some of the aspects of this book (like sadistic guards) and I’m not sure many people could handle it. I should put this book on my TBR, even if it sounds a bit disturbing.
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Yes, I think the book is worth reading since it raises all these interesting issues, even if it does show an extreme example of reality television.
I also find some reality TV shows disturbing. I feel strongly about this issue. There are real people there as participants and not some characters in a film. And yes, maybe they consented to certain situations, but that does not justify all the exploitation of them and their private affairs. An actor can forget his role and move on, but some of these people in reality talk shows, after they have been publicly shamed and humiliated, then have to wake up each morning and live with it. There is just something so insensitive about certain aspects of these shows just for the audience to have a laugh or boo them, enjoying this real drama. Whatever immoral acts these people might have committed in their private lives certainly no human being deserves to be “helped” this way aka “exploited” for audiences’ entertainment in this manner.
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