The North China Lover

For fans of Duras’s enduring bestseller The Lover, an evocative and intimate exploration of the drama and power of adolescence, in a remarkable blend of fiction and memoir

“An original and powerful book, with the brutal honesty of a black-and-white documentary.” —Chicago Tribune

Far more daring and truthful than any of her other novels, The North China Lover is a fascinating retelling of the dramatic experiences of Duras’s adolescence that shaped her most famous work. Initially conceived as notes toward a screenplay for The Lover, this later novel, written toward the end of her life, emphasizes the tougher aspects of her youth in Indochina and possesses the intimate feel of a documentary.

Both shocking and enthralling, the story Duras tells is “so powerfully imagined (or remembered) that it . . . lingers like a strong perfume” (Publishers Weekly). Hailed by the French critics as a return to “the Duras of the great books and the great days,” it is a mature and complex rendering of a formative period in the author’s life.

Books by Marguerite Duras

Wartime Writings
1943–1949

Marguerite Duras

The Impudent Ones
A Novel

Marguerite Duras

The War
A Memoir

Marguerite Duras

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