The Lover (Duras novel)
LC Class | PQ2607.U8245 A626 1984 |
The Lover (French: L'Amant) is an autobiographical novel by Marguerite Duras, published in 1984 by Les Éditions de Minuit. It has been translated into 43 languages and was awarded the 1984 Prix Goncourt. It was adapted to film in 1992 as The Lover.
Plot summary
Set against the backdrop of French Indochina, The Lover reveals the intimacies and intricacies of a clandestine romance between a pubescent girl from a financially strapped French family and an older, wealthy Chinese-Vietnamese man.
In 1929, a 15-year-old nameless girl is traveling by ferry across the
Compelled by the circumstances of her upbringing, this girl, the daughter of a
For her lover, there is no question of the depth and sincerity of his love, but it is not until much later that the girl acknowledges to herself her true feelings.
Published versions
There are two published versions of The Lover: one written in the form of an autobiography, without any superimposed temporal structures, as the young girl narrates in first-person; the other, called The North China Lover and released in conjunction with the film version of the work, is in film script form, in the third person, with written dialogue and without internal monologue. This second version also contains more humor than the original.
In the first version of
Real-life connections
Duras published The Lover[1] when she was 70, 55 years after she met Léo, the Chinese man of her story (his legal name was Huỳnh Thủy Lê). She wrote about her experience in three works: The Sea Wall, The Lover, and The North China Lover.[2][3]
References
- ISBN 0-394-54588-5.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-04-14.
- ISBN 978-1-59558-200-3.
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External links
- (in French) L'Amant at the Editions de Minuithomepage