The Lover

· Pantheon
4.4
34 reviews
Ebook
128
Pages
Eligible
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About this ebook

An international best-seller with more than one million copies in print and a winner of France's Prix Goncourt, The Lover has been acclaimed by critics all over the world since its first publication in 1984.

Set in the prewar Indochina of Marguerite Duras's childhood, this is the haunting tale of a tumultuous affair between an adolescent French girl and her Chinese lover. In spare yet luminous prose, Duras evokes life on the margins of Saigon in the waning days of France's colonial empire, and its representation in the passionate relationship between two unforgettable outcasts.

Long unavailable in hardcover, this edition of The Lover includes a new introduction by Maxine Hong Kingston that looks back at Duras's world from an intriguing new perspective--that of a visitor to Vietnam today.

Ratings and reviews

4.4
34 reviews
Piyali Mukherjee
May 26, 2021
Duras renders a mood, a sketch of a young girl navigating a violently abusive family, the tides of colonialism and the force of puberty. There's an abstract softness about the whole work, as if we are witnessing a dream unfold, and the pronouns slowly settle into the characters that must later make context. But underneath it there's theft, assault, violence, dementia, suppressed hysteria and the incredible longing for death through the vibrant setting of Indochina/Vietnam.
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Trista
April 18, 2023
OK!
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Irma Amodeo
June 22, 2015
The Lover
5 people found this review helpful
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About the author

Marguerite Duras is the author of many novels and screenplays, including the film script for Hiroshima, Mon Amour. One of France's most important literary figures, Duras died in Paris in 1996.

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