The Lover [Paperback]

An international best-seller with more than one million copies in print and a winner of France’s Prix Goncourt,The Loverhas 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 ofThe Loverincludes 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.

(With an introduction by Maxine Hong Kingston; translated from the French by Barbara Bray.) Powerful, authentic, completely successful . . . perfect.
—The New York Times Book Review

“An exquisite jewel of a novel, as multifaceted as a diamond, as seamless and polished as a pearl.”
—Boston Herald
  
“A vivid, lingering novel . . . a brilliant work of art.”
—ClevelandPlain Dealer

One of France's most important literary figures, MARGUERITE DURASis best known in the United States for her novel The Lover,and for her brilliant film scriptHiroshima, Mon Amour.She is also the author of many other acclaimed novels (The Ravishing of Lol Stein) and screenplays (Détruire, dit-elle). Born in Saigon in 1914 and died in Paris in 1996.