The Life of Hunger

This book is a semi-autobiographic novel by Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb. I had never heard of her, but after this I certainly want to read more of her stuff. She was born in Kobe and lived in different parts of the world before she first visited Belgium at age seventeen, where she stayed not too long and moved back to Japan. This book describes her childhood adventures until that point. It is a story full of desperate voices and descriptive power. You should really give this one a try.