The dictionary was the atlas of words. It defined their range, their nationality, their limits. Some of those empires were baffling strange: azimuth, beryl, odalisque, pyx.

If you scoured its pages, you could also discover the name of your own affliction. Mine was called "missing Japan", which is the true definition of the word "nostalgia".

All nostalgia is Japanese. There is nothing more Japanese than pining for one's past and experiencing the passing of time as a grand and tragic defeat. A Senegalese who misses the good old days of Senegal is just a Japanese who hasn't yet noticed that he is one. A Belgian girl weeping at the memory of the land of the Rising Sun deserves Japanese nationality twice over.

Amelie Nothomb, The Life of Hunger