The Lover

A modern classic and international bestseller with more than one million copies in print, The Lover has been celebrated by critics and readers across the globe 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.

— from Penguin Books

This novella told in haunting, enrapturing prose (much like love's nature itself) opened my insights on Love. What it means to love and be loved. It also made me ponder: is love a state of being or a becoming; an act? Is it worth it to be loved or to love? For love itself, is like a set of scales with precarious balance.

[Curator's note: First published in 1984, this title has been widely translated and adapted into a film. Bringing this gem back to light which may have been dusted away as time passed.]

— Lisa, PS (Early Literacy)