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An elegant new paperback edition of one of Marguerite Duras's most important books.
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.
Hailed in France as "an incomparable pleasure, " Duras's newest novel is a fascinating retelling of the dramatic experiences of her adolescence that have shaped her work. Far more daring and truthful than any book she has written before, it emphasizes the tough realities of her youth in Indochina and reveals much that her earlier works (including The Lover) concealed.
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Donna Leach
reviewed North China Lover on June 19, 2015
North China Lover
Marguerite Duras must have led an extraordinary, emotionally complex, devastating childhood if any of the scenes of this work are real. Because my French is a work in progress, I read L'Amant de la Chine du Nord (The North China Lover) in short bursts over the summer when I was in the mood, but in the last few days I decided to devote a few hours to it every day, and I don't regret it at all.
Reading in other languages really is such a different experience, and that first moment when you go a whole page without looking up a single word is triumphant. Before Duras' work I could ramble about unemployment, politics, immigration, current events, etc., but the concept of love and loss in the language of love and loss had evaded me. Duras changed that.
Colonialism in South East Asia is possibly the most complicated version of Western colonialism: the Dutch in Indonesia, the British in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc., and the French in Indochina. None of it ended prettily or cleanly. Even today (especially today), SE Asia is a sometimes unfathomable mix of territory disputes, rebelling ethnic groups, human and drug trafficking, and shipping. In Duras' time of the 1930s, Vietnam was under French rule, and this novel is the story of her affair with an older, opium-addicted Chinese man.
Emotions break, tears flow, and anger sparks, the flow of the French creates an emotion of itself. The story flows with these emotions, as does the speed of the text. The atmosphere of Vietnam is so important for Duras, and the events of the novel haunt me and more importantly Duras, positively and negatively. I know I'll always remember why it happened, long after I forget what happened. The flow of the river, the buzz of the rice fields, and lying in a bed for hours, blankly staring, waiting for something to end.
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