''The Lover'' (French: ''L'Amant'') is an

autobiographical novel An autobiographical novel, also known as an autobiographical fiction, fictional autobiography, or autobiographical fiction novel, is a type of novel which uses autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fictive elements. The ...

Marguerite Duras Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu (, 4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996), known as Marguerite Duras (), was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film ''Hiroshima mon amour'' (1959) ea ...

, published in 1984 by

Les Éditions de Minuit Les Éditions de Minuit (, ''Midnight Press'') is a French publishing house. It was founded in 1941, during the French Resistance of World War II, and is still publishing books today. History Les Éditions de Minuit was founded by writer and ...

. It has been translated into 43 languages and was awarded the 1984

Prix Goncourt The Prix Goncourt ( , "The Goncourt Prize") is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year". The prize carries a symbolic reward of only 10 euros, but resul ...

. It was adapted to film in 1992 as '' The Lover''.

Plot summary

Set against the backdrop of

French Indochina French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China), officially known as the Indochinese Union and after 1941 as the Indochinese Federation, was a group of French dependent territories in Southeast Asia from 1887 to 1954. It was initial ...

, ''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 Chinese may refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people identified with China, through nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **Han Chinese, East Asian ethnic group native to China. **'' Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic ...

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overseas Vietnamese, Vietnamese people living outside Vietna ...

man. In 1929, a 15-year-old nameless girl is traveling by ferry across the

Mekong Delta The Mekong Delta ( or simply ), also known as the Western Region () or South-western region (), is the list of regions of Vietnam, region in southwestern Vietnam where the Mekong, Mekong River River delta, approaches and empties into the sea th ...

, returning from a holiday at her family home in the town of

Sa Đéc Sa Đéc is a Provincial city (Vietnam), Provincial city in Đồng Tháp Province in the Mekong Delta of southern Vietnam. It is a river port and agricultural and industrial trading center. The Sa Đéc economic zone consists of Châu Thành D ...

to her

boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. They have existed for many centuries, and now extend acr ...

Saigon Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) ('','' TP.HCM; ), commonly known as Saigon (; ), is the most populous city in Vietnam with a population of around 14 million in 2025. The city's geography is defined by rivers and canals, of which the largest is Saigo ...

. She attracts the attention of a 27-year-old son of a Chinese business magnate, a young man of wealth and heir to a fortune. He strikes up a conversation with the girl; she accepts a ride back to town in his chauffeured limousine. Compelled by the circumstances of her upbringing, this girl, the daughter of a

bankrupt Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the de ...

manic depressive Bipolar disorder (BD), previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally elevated mood that each last from days to weeks, and in some cases months. If the elevated m ...

widow, is newly awakened to the impending and all-too-real task of making her way alone in the world. Thus, she becomes his lover, until he bows to the disapproval of his father and breaks off the affair. 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 A screenplay, or script, is a written work produced for a film, television show (also known as a ''teleplay''), or video game by screenwriters (cf. ''stage play''). Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writ ...

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 Avital Inbar's

Hebrew transliteration The Hebrew language uses the Hebrew alphabet with optional vowel diacritics. The romanization of Hebrew is the use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Hebrew words. For example, the Hebrew name () can be romanized as or . Romanization i ...

(Maariv publishers, 1986, page 11), there is an excerpt, dictated by Marguerite Duras on the phone to her translator; a section that does not appear in any other version of the book.

Barbara Bray Barbara Bray (née Jacobs; 24 November 1924 – 25 February 2010) was an English translator and critic. Early life Bray was born in Maida Vale, London; her father had Belgian and Jewish origins. An identical twin (her sister Olive Classe was al ...

's English translation won the

Scott Moncrieff Prize The Scott Moncrieff Prize, established in 1965, and named after the translator C. K. Scott Moncrieff, is an annual £3,000 literary prize for French-to-English translation, awarded to one or more translators every year for a full-length work deem ...

and

PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize The PEN Translation Prize (formerly known as the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize through 2008) is an annual award given by PEN America (formerly PEN American Center) to outstanding translations into the English language. It has been pr ...

in 1986.

Real-life connections

Duras published ''The Lover'' 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 Sea Wall or The Sea Wall may refer to: * Seawall, a constructed coastal defence * Sea Wall, Guyana * ''The Sea Wall'' (novel), 1950 French novel by Marguerite Duras * ''The Sea Wall'' (film), 2008 film based on Duras' novel See also *'' This Ang ...

'', ''The Lover'', and ''The North China Lover''.

References

External links

*
''L'Amant''
at the

Editions de Minuit Edition may refer to: * Edition (book), a bibliographical term for a substantially similar set of copies * Edition (printmaking), a publishing term for a set print run * Edition (textual criticism), a particular version of a text * Edition Records ...

homepage {{DEFAULTSORT:Lover 1984 French novels Novels by Marguerite Duras French autobiographical novels French novels adapted into films Novels about ephebophilia Interracial romance novels Novels set in Vietnam Novels set in the French colonial empire Prix Goncourt–winning works