“A Dictionary of Proper Names” is one of the most unusual novels by the brilliant Amelie Nothomb. Competing in plot construction with the great master of the theater of the absurd, Eugene Ionesco, Nothomb places herself in the space of a stylized nightmare, as if calling on the reader not to understand everything she has written literally. A girl with a rare and unpronounceable name, Plectrude, is born under very sad circumstances: her nineteen-year-old mother shot her husband a month before giving birth and, after giving birth to a child in prison, hanged herself. This is the beginning of the book. Its end is no less dramatic. However, Amelie Nothomb knows how to turn everything inside out.