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L'Amant

by Marguerite Duras

3.79 · rating details · 6,005 ratings · 470 reviews

Original French language edition of "L'amant."

Broché, 142 pages

Published September 1st 1984 by Editions de Minuit (first published 1984)

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Jul 01, 2011

Praj rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: md

Dearest Marguerite,

I know it is awfully late now, to write to you. I could not resist though. I thought about you the other day; as her eyes scanned the Chinese gentleman for the first time, on the ferry to Mekong. The demure young features veiled under a mannish hat, gave away precocious impression of a 15 year old girl as he offered her a cigarette. The statuesque Chinaman who exuded charm and eloquence was besotted by her as she was by him. He was to be her lover; an escape from t...more

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Feb 12, 2009

Evan rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2009-reads, tami-tomes, deliciously-nasty, yearning, asia, fucked-up-women, french-euro-erotica, __in-my-collection

I could see myself re-reading this. There was a sigh in my throat and hardness in the loins, simultaneously. High yearning quotient. Prose as poetry. Smooth. Written in simple language, yet dense in feeling. Duras reveals bits in back and forth chronology, sort of the way real people remember their lives, but not the way they normally would try to convey it to others - thus a sense of getting into the teller's thoughts. I loved this.
-E

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Jul 13, 2011

K.D. rated it

· review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: 501 Must Read Books; 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006-2010)

Shelves: french, sex

Probably the most famous among the many brilliant works of Marguerite Duras (1914-1996), The Lover (French: L’Amant) is based on her actual experience while living in Vietnam during her teen years. Published in 1984, this autobiographical novel has been translated to 43 languages, awarded the 1984 Prix Goncourt and was turned into a movie in 1992 starring Jane March as the 15-1/2-y/o French girl Duras and Tony Leung as 17-y/o Chinese Man.

Yes, the novel (as well as the movie where the scene abov...moreProbably the most famous among the many brilliant works of Marguerite Duras (1914-1996), The Lover (French: L’Amant) is based on her actual experience while living in Vietnam during her teen years. Published in 1984, this autobiographical novel has been translated to 43 languages, awarded the 1984 Prix Goncourt and was turned into a movie in 1992 starring Jane March as the 15-1/2-y/o French girl Duras and Tony Leung as 17-y/o Chinese Man.

Yes, the novel (as well as the movie where the scene above was taken) is only for matured readers as it has descriptive sex scenes. The scenes, including the whole novel, are beautifully narrated. Duras made use of shifting first person and third person narrations. At first, I was confused me but later I thought that the reason for the shifts was that she, at some points, wanted to dissociate herself from what was happening in her life. Looking back, she wanted to recall those parts of her life to be like a dream. This should have taken a lot of courage in her part. As Duras published this book in 1984 when she was 70 years old and already a world-renowned novelist and film director. Imagine telling that you lost your virginity to a Chinese man when you were fifteen years old and you agressively did those sexual positions and uttered those unprintable words.

It was a tragic love affair. Both Duras and her lover were still young when they had all those sex and only realized that they loved each other when they were already apart. I was reminded by the young Rose throwing the Pearl of the Sea to the water while remembering Jack with fondless in the closing scenes of James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster movie Titanic. There is no similar scene in The Lover but the ship cabin scene while Chopin pieces were playing and with Duras was crying was particularly moving and you could feel her pain even just by reading those beautiful passages. It will surely make you remember your first love and trigger the what if questions once again.

In a nutshell, The Lover is like Duras' confession before her death twelve years after. It is about racism. The Duras family prohibited her to marry a Chinese while the rich father of her lover wanted him to marry the daughter of a daughter of another rich Chinese family. That even if her French family was penniless and hungry, they still felt superior compared to Asians (Chinese and Vietnamese included) because they have whiter skin. It is about love that blossomed too early to be be acknowledged as such but too late to come into fruition. It's really about the role of the society and how it influences the lives of the people at both sides (conquerors or conquered) of the world.

Kudos to Marguerite Duras. This is a lot better than her other book that I've read early this year, The Ravishing of Lol Stein (1964). Now, I am geared towards reading my third of her books, The Vice-Consul (1968).
(less)

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Sep 14, 2009

Foroogh added it · review of another edition

"فراق و ناکامی زنها به نظر من خطایی بود که خود مرتکب شده بودند.چیز اشتیاق برانگیزی وجود نداشت.اشتیاق یا در همان فراق نهفته بود یا وجود نداشت.اشتیاق یا در همان نگاه اول نهفته بود یا اصلا وجود نداشت.اشتیاق یا شعور بی واسطه ی رابطه بود یا اینکه اصلا هیچ چیز نبود.به هرحال این را قبل ازآن تجربه دریافتم"ص22

"می گوید که بعدش همیشه کسالت آور است.لبخند می زند:خواه پای عشق درمیان باشد خواه نه.می گوید که با فرارسیدن شب،به محض تاریک شدن ،تمام می شود.می گویم که مساله فقط روز و گرما ...more

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Apr 15, 2008

Ron Palmer rated it

· review of another edition

Recommended to Ron by: Leah Probst

I finally finished Marguerite Duras' "The Lover." Why did it take me this long to read a 117-page novel? (I posted it on my currently-reading shelf on Feb. 25th). [HINT: It is not because I didn't want it to end.]

Was it the nature of the writing: random, unconnected musings by une femme d'un certain age of her colonial adolescence? Was it the frustrating way she shifted subjects, time, and place at will? Maybe it is the movie-lover in me (I don't want to reveal too much a...more

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Apr 05, 2008

Lightsey rated it

· review of another edition

So I have a problem with fiction. A problem with voices, really--I don't like a lot of them. The result is that I tend to read the same novels over and over. Well, honestly, I tend to read Jane Austen novels over and over. But this has me going. A brilliantly perverse description of a young girl's outfit (just before her first seduction) opens the novella, and. . . well. . . take it from there. . . so far, delicious.

I finished this and turned it over and read the first few pages agai...more

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Feb 08, 2010

Misha rated it

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Shelves: loved-it, 2010

I think I blew through this slender book a little too quickly. I should have taken more time to savor each paragraph of Duras' sparsely beautiful prose. I feel a re-read coming in the future.

I love the way Duras chose to eschew the traditional linear narrative and instead let the story wind across the pages and circle back upon itself, flowing a bit like the way she describes the Mekong and picking up everything in its path. In some ways the pacing of it evoked the languorous speed o...more

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Jul 08, 2008

john rated it

· review of another edition

Recommended to john by: dresden, jess

testing.

I don't review books. Whatever gets written here will not be a review.

(1) The episode "I told you about" - when older brother fells all the woods and gambles away the profits in one night - is somehow also Faulkner. Completely Duras, obviously, but also Absalom, Absalom! (No less wildcat for becoming-baboon, Deleuze would say, and this apparently decadent cross-reference is in fact surprisingly imbricated with what you will trip over said of double fun...more

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May 24, 2008

Elizabeth rated it

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Shelves: french-francophone, reviewed, look-what-love-has-done

I first read this book in high school. Looking back, I would consider that too young for the subject matter, except that is how old Duras was when the events of the book took place. It's well established that the book is fairly autobiographical. In fact, when the film version made such a botch of the story, Duras wrote it again in The North China Lover. Unfortunately, the later book doesn't express the same spirit and sense of longing that was in the first. I think she had too much perspective o...more

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May 09, 2008

Nathaniel rated it

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Shelves: originally-in-french

The tone of this book is emotionally flatlined. Terror, physical ecstasy, hatred and depression all file past in the same abstracted, languorous fashion: mentioned, but not really written. We know that the early part of this narrator's life was characterized by withdrawal and passive observation and that she has taken to drinking in her middle age (we also know this is a French novella from the end of the 20th century); but these facts don't entirely justify the loosely structured and vaguely ex...more

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Feb 24, 2008

Lola rated it

· review of another edition

My friend Khira recommended this book to me, and that alone assured that it would be beautifully written--both frank and lyrical. It took me a moment to settle into Duras' writing (or the translator's interpretation) because it's very fragmented. Duras tells her story through many moments and thoughts built on one another, which can feel unbalanced, like a conversation with a drunkard who assumes you can follow her poetic thoughts from one to the next by sheer force of concentration. But once I ...more

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Dec 08, 2008

Duc rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: the-best, vietnam

This book takes me back to the Mekong Delta more then once though I've been through the Mekong probably once in my life. I did live near a river that flows into the Delta and into the sea. I visited my friend who's house projected over the river. It was an exotic house because it was so close to the river. The narrative and voice of this book is the river and it flows, everything flows to the heart or maybe away from it. The author lived it. It must be hard to write something so close. It...more

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Aug 05, 2010

Jenelle rated it

· review of another edition

I don't think I've ever read a more intimate book, like it was written in bed: dewy, languid, naked. narration that, in its warm drowsiness, skips around in chronology to follow, briefly, a whim of a theme: a slow, semi-improvised environmental construction. utterly personal. I tried to read this once before and couldn't stomach it, and I still find Duras undoubtedly but now bearably narcissistic, if only because the girl (herself) is given such perfect dimensions.

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Oct 24, 2007

Theresa rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Only my closest friends

This is my favorite book ever. I first came across the story when I was 13; baby-sitting one weekend at a neighbor's house. But I didn't actually read the book until I was 21 and it changed my life.

Marguerite Duras's prose is so powerful that I have full paragraphs memorized. Each sentence is pure poetry. Not everyone will get it, but it hit me like a ligthening bolt. I felt like someone reached inside & took a look at my soul & then wrote my innermost secrets down. I love Ma...more

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May 16, 2008

Dirk rated it

· review of another edition

I recently relistened to the recording of this novella by Margaret Baune originally aired on KP FA decades ago. This is one of several versions Duras wrote of her teenage affaire in Saigon with a Chinese banker, one of which was a major motion picture a few years ago. Duras is one of my favorite writers; she describes the often odd and desperate and usually isolated emotional lives of her characters with discipline, care, and without sentimentality. This novella evokes the feelings, or lack of f...more

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Sep 12, 2008

Katherine rated it

· review of another edition

Recommended to Katherine by: Maria Calandra

Shelves: in-translation

I learned that if you read 'The Lover' on the subway, men will look at you extra. Good to know.

Update: Having finished the book, what I admire most about it is Duras' combination of verge-of-lurid subject matter with an utterly deadpan tone of voice. The latter makes the former possible, and the combination creates an impression of a very complicated character, a bad-ass woman who probably carries more pain and other difficult feelings than we'll ever know. The tone here is like 'a t...more

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Jul 05, 2007

Cheri rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Those looking for a Quick Sexy Read plus a little more.

Shelves: classics-french

I read this book when I was very young, probably too young as it sent me in a day from tomboy to well... not a tomboy. Steeped in sensuality, laced with menace and thwarted childhood, this spoke to me about the realities of how complex the movement from girlhood to womanhood is. Plus, it was just so damned erotic. I actually prefer this older version to the later version Duras brought out, which made more explicit the sexual danger in her own home. While it may explain her early sexualizati...more

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Jan 26, 2012

Mia rated it

· review of another edition

Oh my God. I was like a starving child, so hungry that I couldn’t even recognize it. The Lover was a steaming tangine filled with the most luscious vegetables; it made me feel more alive. It was a short, magical read that shook me to the core. I gobbled it up in one visit to the Coffee Shop.

Don’t confuse my reaction for happiness. This book is nothing but misery, as most soul-stirring things are. WARNING: this book is quite terrifying, but I haven’t read anything as beautiful in...more

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Oct 29, 2011

Bruce rated it

· review of another edition

The narrative is highly convoluted, emphasizing that life has no singular line, no linear pattern. The prose is a mosaic, digressive and allusive, setting the stage for a story told in retrospect of the adolescence of a French girl in Saigon, poor, interruptedly educated, living with her mother who seems bipolar and younger brother, her older brother having been sent to school in France. Telling her story in the first person, the narrator, speaking as an old woman in France, confesses that her...moreThe narrative is highly convoluted, emphasizing that life has no singular line, no linear pattern. The prose is a mosaic, digressive and allusive, setting the stage for a story told in retrospect of the adolescence of a French girl in Saigon, poor, interruptedly educated, living with her mother who seems bipolar and younger brother, her older brother having been sent to school in France. Telling her story in the first person, the narrator, speaking as an old woman in France, confesses that her life was shaped by drink and desire. The style at the beginning is almost like a rambling set of reminiscences, gradually circling inward to focus on a particular day when she was fifteen and a half, on a ferry going to Saigon.

It is striking that so many of the narrator’s descriptions of herself involve her appearance – her hair, her bodily characteristics, her clothing, her physical sensations. Granted that these may be the preoccupations of a mid-adolescent, these are the descriptions of an elderly lady remembering events from her youth, and I might have expected more interest or insights into her emotionally responses to her life at that time. She has a curious way of alternating between past and present tenses, the former usually referring to times before she was fifteen and a half, the latter referring to her experiences at that age. She also alternates telling her story between using first- and third-person narrative, although the former predominates.

Her relationship with her mother is characterized by ambivalence, love alternating with hate, and that is consistent with a person of her age, I think. First her younger brother dies, then, after WWII, her mother. By the time of the story her older brother, her last surviving family member and a sociopath, is dead too. She neither misses nor loves them any longer, her love having died with her younger brother.

On the ferry that day, the ferry to Saigon, she is approached by a rich young Chinese man. Realizing her power over him, she enters his limousine and goes with him, her life changing in that moment. Why does this happen? Why does she let it happen? She recalls feeling fated, as if the time had come for something like this to happen, for her to leave her family irrevocably. Of course they become lovers (although that is a bit of a misnomer, since the narrator adamantly refuses to let “love” be a component of the relationship), but the becoming so for her involves a strange passivity on her part, a fatedness, even as she is aware that her power over him is supreme. The characters, who are never named, seem almost archetypal. Relationships are primal, physical and sensual, mixed on the part of the narrator with the practical awareness that she is attracted not only by physical desire but by wealth, her background of physical impoverishment making that attraction understandable.

In interactions between her family and her lover, issues of race block all possibility of mutual understanding. The narrator in these situations is pulled in both directions, becoming a person other than who she is with either alone. Duras is very perceptive about the psychology governing these encounters and responses. Her family members themselves interact among themselves only with difficulty, all three siblings loving the increasingly despondent and immobilized mother but seemingly abhorring each other, except for the girl and her younger brother who are important to each other. Do the difficulties with love, intimacy, and dependency within the family make the narrator vulnerable to difficulties in her relationships with people outside the family, especially to her seeking an odd kind of impersonal sexual relationship, one focusing on physicality without emotional ties? The narrator later becomes consumed with desire for a fellow classmate, Helene Lagonelle, desiring not only her body but for Helene to make love to the Chinese. The narrative increasingly breaks down into short choppy paragraphs, small musings and memories, often apparently unrelated to each other. Now she wants to grow up to be a writer. Now she is with her lover. Now she thinks of Helene. And then Helene disappears from the story.

Nearing the end, the story suggests subliminal issues of incest and pedophilia. And one begins to understand that the intense desire for physical pleasure, for the submersion of self in sensuality, is a denial of both external everyday reality and also, in a strange way, of death itself, even as, paradoxically, death sometimes seems desirable. At times the narrative seems to be a study of the moral deterioration of the French, and by extension of any colonial power, in one of their colonies. It certainly is an examination of racial politics. But one senses that there is something more primordial than this, a sense that the novel is an actual experiencing of a transition from childhood to adulthood in the context of a unique and absolutely individual life, a life that is a product of both circumstances and her response to those circumstances. And one of Duras’ accomplishments is her ability to universalize this single life story, to tap into feelings and experiences of her readers such that the story becomes part each reader, even resurrecting memories and feelings buried deep in the past, far down in the individual psyche. This is an odd and compelling work, well worth reading, a work whose prose is beautiful, poetic, and often spell-binding.
(less)

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Oct 28, 2011

Heather Shipley rated it

· review of another edition

I wish I could give this 3.5 stars, or grade it the way my English teachers of yore might have: A- for the writing, which is splendid, with a B+ for longevity. (Five stars would be an A+, and that grade is reserved for anyone named William Shakespeare. Lord Byron was 3.5 stars on his best day.) And yet (full disclosure) I have only ever read the English version. Perhaps the French would be even better, but I doubt my skills are still sufficient to appreciate the original. I'd like to try, o...moreI wish I could give this 3.5 stars, or grade it the way my English teachers of yore might have: A- for the writing, which is splendid, with a B+ for longevity. (Five stars would be an A+, and that grade is reserved for anyone named William Shakespeare. Lord Byron was 3.5 stars on his best day.) And yet (full disclosure) I have only ever read the English version. Perhaps the French would be even better, but I doubt my skills are still sufficient to appreciate the original. I'd like to try, one day.

Digression: as much as I love Les Editions de Minuit, my first exposure to them was having to pay $70 for a copy of En Attendant Godot my freshman year. It was the size of a pamphlet, and I wondered if they were horsethieves holding the book hostage. It made me leery of their catalogue. But I ended up doing my English thesis on Samuel Beckett, so I learned it was for an excellent cause. They started during the German occupation, as part of the Resistance, and operated underground until the liberation of France. They have my heart.

The Lover is one I re-read occasionally, for two reasons: first, the tone. I prefer writing that is lean, precise, and muscular, and this slim volume is that. A vivid emotional and physical landscape created without emotional language or excessive description pleases me so very much.

The second reason is the character herself. Being French, she has comfort with her discomfort. There is honesty rather than self-judgment in her recollection, which is not common in the English writing I know better; she paints a true picture. The wise recollection later in life shows the girl she was, but I feel drawn to the narrator for her kind but unsentimental clarity. This woman's voice is very French, without being like Colette or Anais. Being set in Saigon, there is nothing chic or bohemian or Parisian about it. The location is exotic, but it's normal to the girl. The shabbiness is not tawdry or embarrassing, nor is the sex.

This story also reminds me of my own precocious heyday, so I'm sentimentally attached to the story in its calm description of conflagrations past. It's often more important to young girls to be desired than to get what they desire; they may not be old enough to have cultivated real wants. Sometimes they never do, and simply end up with what life gives them. I always felt so sad for Lolita, the way she ended up. If you don't want anything badly, you never get what you want, and if you're strongly diverted from your true or honest growth, you can become warped, just like a tree in bonsai. But that's another story.(less)

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May 23, 2011

vanya klecherova rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

06 януари, 2009, 11:52:47

"любовникът" е един изящно написан роман, много го обичам.
филмът по него не харесах особено -
акцентира се предимно и най-вече върху темата за любовта,
въпреки че романът е доста по-разпластен
и концентрира вниманието и върху други теми. текстът наример
спокойно може да се казва и "майка ми". в този смисъл,
филмът е доста еднопластов и никак не представя
цялостния етос на книгата. иначе - като напр...more

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May 15, 2011

Megan rated it

· review of another edition

I saw the movie The Lover many moons ago when I was about the same age as the narrator. I thought it was sensual and fascinating at the time. The ending left me stunned.

Now that I have read the book, in this strange case, I would have to say that I liked the movie better. It is not just that perhaps the subject matter is less revelatory now than it was when I was 13 or 14, it is that the book itself was hard to follow. There were frequent jumps between the narrator speaking of her ...more

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Dec 07, 2010

Alins rated it

· review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I first saw the movie which was based on this book. I absolutely adored the movie and I couldn't wait to read the book. This book is one of the best books I ever read (and I read a lot). It's absolutely amazing. The story is about a fifteen-year-old girl who falls in love with a wealthy twenty-nine-year-old China man in 1930's Indochina. But the greatness of this book doesn't come from the story line, it lays in the way Marguerite Duras tells the story. From the first page you can feel that this...more

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Oct 08, 2010

El rated it

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Shelves: 1001-books-list, late20th-centurylit

I do not find anything particularly attractive about 15-year-old girls having relationships with men almost double their age. I'm not going to sit here and get all judgmental though as this is neither the time nor place for that discussion.

I do, however, find attractive Duras's prose in this autobiographical short novel. The fact that she wrote such a beautiful story about such a personally disturbing topic actually blows my mind a little. It's like when I read Lolita. Again: dis...more

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Jan 19, 2010

Joselito rated it

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You go to an expensive restaurant in the Philippines. Occasionally you would see a big table where a large Filipino family is seated, ages varying from the old to the very young kids. In contrast with the other diners you would notice that this family does not look as if they could afford the restaurant's bill after they've eaten. When you notice this, look carefully. You would notice that among them would be a young Filipina girl, the prettiest, and somewhere near her would be a foreigner, most...more

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Jan 04, 2010

karen rated it

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Shelves: i-joined-a-bookclub, littry-fiction

i found myself utterly muted by this book, which is problematic because the book club meets this friday, and they aren't going to be so dazzled by my bruschetta that i can get away with just hiding behind the tiny jewess and drinking their wine. so i have to think of something.

consulting the "reading group handbook" by rachel w. jacobsohn, bought for my final school assignment, i learn how to think about literature:

characters and story line: young french girl, ...more

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Oct 15, 2009

Nicole rated it

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Shelves: hard-to-beat-the-classics

Here is what kills me about The Lover: It's beautiful. The prose is so dreamy and poetic and lush that I forget the story we're being told is actually pretty horrifying.

Our main (and pov) character is a 15-year-old girl who I don't think ever reveals her name. In fact, none of the primary characters' names are given, or if they are they aren't given frequently enough to stick in my memory. This adds to the foggy dreamy feel of the writing, and makes it easier I think to approach some ...more

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Dec 29, 2008

Amira Hanafi rated it

· review of another edition

I picked up Melissa Buzzeo's book What Began Us at Myopic the other day. It's published by Leon Works, who put out one of my favorite books of late, and so I figured I'd give it a shot. Buzzeo opens up with a quote from The Lover, a book I've been meaning to read for ages, so I put her down and read Duras first. The Lover is primarily a (pretty brilliant) treatise on memory, in the guise of a book about a lover. It's also about desire and the way one can attempt to fulfill desire for one thing...more

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Mar 06, 2008

Suzanne rated it

· review of another edition

I don't speak French, and this is a translated work, but the prose and imagery reflect the period of English and French Colonialism in Southeast Asia during the early to mid 20th Century. Very erotic, and given the age of the author, a bit disturbing.
There was an excellent film version done years ago which i would recommend. It is graphic however, and was quite controversial at the time due to the young age of the actor playing the author.

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Nov 27, 2010

Victoria Gabrielle rated it

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Shelves: art-college-reading

I had to read this book for my French Feminism class, as an example of l'écriture féminine. I thought it was going to be terrible, but as it turns out, I believe it's one of the best books I've read in a really long time. Duras' writing is elusive and ambiguous, but at the same time wonderfully rich and powerful. I've never read anything like it. The closest writer I can think to compare her to (loosely) is someone like James Frey. It's actually a little funny when you think about it, because th...more

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About Marguerite Duras

Marguerite Donnadieu, better known as Marguerite Duras (pronounced [maʀgəʁit dyˈʁas] in French) (April 4, 1914 – March 3, 1996) was a French writer and film director.

She was born at Gia-Dinh, near Saigon, French Indochina (now Vietnam), after her parents responded to a campaign by the French government encouraging people to work in the colony.

Marguerite's father fell ill so...moreMarguerite Donnadieu, better known as Marguerite Duras (pronounced [maʀgəʁit dyˈʁas] in French) (April 4, 1914 – March 3, 1996) was a French writer and film director.

She was born at Gia-Dinh, near Saigon, French Indochina (now Vietnam), after her parents responded to a campaign by the French government encouraging people to work in the colony.

Marguerite's father fell ill soon after their arrival, and returned to France, where he died. After his death, her mother, a teacher, remained in Indochina with her three children. The family lived in relative poverty after a bad investment in an isolated property and area of farmland in Cambodia(tête de pisse). The difficult life that the family experienced during this period was highly influential on Marguerite's later work.

At 17, Marguerite went to France, her parents' native country, where she began studying for a degree in mathematics. This she soon abandoned to concentrate on political sciences, and then law. After completing her studies, she became an active member of the PCF (the French Communist Party) and was engaged in the resistance.

In 1943 she changed her surname to "Duras" for Duras, the name of a village in the Lot-et-Garonne département, where her father's house was located.

She is the author of a great many novels, plays, films, interviews and short narratives, including her best-selling, apparently autobiographical work L'Amant (1984), translated into English as The Lover. This text won the Goncourt prize in 1984. The story of her adolescence also appears in three other forms: The Sea Wall, Eden Cinema and The North China Lover. A film version of The Lover, produced by Claude Berri, was released to great success in 1992.

Other major works include Moderato Cantabile, also made into a film of the same name, Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein, and her film India Song. She was also the screenwriter of the 1959 French film Hiroshima mon amour, which was directed by Alain Resnais.

Duras's early novels were fairly conventional in form (their 'romanticism' was criticised by fellow writer Raymond Queneau); however, with Moderato Cantabile she became more experimental, paring down her texts to give ever-increasing importance to what was not said. She was associated with the Nouveau roman French literary movement, although did not definitively belong to any group. Her films are also experimental in form, most eschewing synch sound, using voice over to allude to, rather than tell, a story over images whose relation to what is said may be more-or-less tangential.

Marguerite's adult life was somewhat difficult, despite her success as a writer, and she was known for her periods of alcoholism. She died in Paris, aged 82 from throat cancer and is interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse. Her tomb is marked simply 'MD'.

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Quotes from L'Amant

“Very early in my life it was too late.” — 83 people liked it

“I've known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you're more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged.” — 32 people liked it

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