The North China Lover [Hardcover]

Marguerite Duras (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1992

An instant number-one best-seller in France, The North China Lover both shocks and entrances its readers. Initially written as notes toward a film script for The Lover, the book has the grainy, filmic qualities of a documentary. Far more daring and truthful than any book Duras has written before, The North China Lover emphasizes the realities of her youth in Indochina and reveals much that her earlier works concealed.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Hailed in France as "an incomparable pleasure," Marguerite Duras's 1991 novel is a spare, beautiful retelling of the dramatic experiences of her own adolescence. More daring and truthful than any book she wrote previously -- including The Lover, it emphasizes the realities of her youth in Indochina and reveals much that her earlier works concealed. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

The veteran French author, who scored a considerable success with The Lover, here zeroes in much more closely on the passionate affair between her young self, a French teenager at a school in Indo-China in the early 1930s, and the spoiled young son of a Chinese millionaire. Beginning as bare notes toward a film script (Duras wrote the script for Hiroshima, Mon Amour), the story quickly takes on its own intense, exotic flavor. The febrile sexuality of the young girls at the school, the languid emotionalism of the Chinese lover, the splendid cars, the melancholy American dance music, the open roads across the rice paddies under wide rainy skies, the cinemas and nightclubs, and finally the ocean liner that takes her tragic family back to F'rance-Duras evokes all this with the utmost economy but the most telling atmospheric force. No doubt her lean, haunting prose reads even more beautifully in the original French, but Duras's story is so powerfully imagined (or remembered) that its blend of passion and cynicism lingers like a strong perfume. Irresistible for grownup romantics.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The; First Edition edition (September 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565840186
• ISBN-13: 978-1565840188
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,202,123 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Compelling Novel of Memory and Eroticism, May 2, 2002

By 

"botatoe" (Albany, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The North China Lover (Hardcover)

In 1984, Marguerite Duras won the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary award, for her short novel, "The Lover". That novel told the simple story of an adolescent French girl living in Vietnam in the 1930s. She meets an older Chinese man who becomes her lover. It is a sparely written novel, shifting in time and narrative perspective, often difficult to follow. It is also a novel charged with memory, yearning and erotic feeling.

"The North China Lover", written several years later and published in an English edition in 1992, is a kind of extension of the earlier novel, written with much more detail, inhabiting the interstices of "The Lover". Like its precursor, "The North China Lover" tells a powerful tale of love between the twenty-seven year old Chinese man and the barely teen-aged girl whom he meets on a ferry crossing the Mekong River. Once again, neither the Chinese man nor the girl has a name. However, unlike the earlier novel, many of the other characters are identified and the narrative of "The North China Lover" is considerably more detailed. Originally written as notes for a screenplay of "The Lover", the narrative of "The North China Lover" is episodic, described by one reviewer as having the "grainy, filmic qualities of a documentary." It is also more linear in its story line, easier to follow than the earlier novel, but still characterized by the nouveau roman influences that permeate Marguerite Duras' writing.

"The North China Lover", like its precursor, is a compelling work of memory, eroticism and yearning that, in true Duras style, conflates literary imagination and biography. Read it slowly, languorously savor its eroticism, and let it linger in your mind long after you've closed the book.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Duras' captures keen detail in this follow-up to The Lover., November 11, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The North China Lover (Hardcover)

After first reading The Lover in my freshman year of college English course, Marguerite Duras' sporatic yet detailed writing ability left me hungry for more of her work. A caution to unprepared readers, though, the author's train of thought is somewhat confusing but a very pleasurable experience, overall. If you get to love her unique style of writing as much as I do, you will be hooked on this story of passion for life.

The North China Lover explores a deeper account, as first explained in Duras' The Lover, of the passionate affair carried on by "the child" and her "Chinese lover" in 1920s Indochina. Duras pays particular attention to addressing the mother and the two brothers of the child, forcing the reader to question whether the child allows her lover to take her sex for money or pure passion.

This autobiography of Duras' early years could be described as a real twist of fate in true Romeo and Juliet style. The Chinese lover could never marry the child because his traditional, wealthy father would never permit it, and it is in this suffering the child realizes his only real worthiness is in his captivating lovemaking. The child knows she will never marry her lover, and it is this truth which keeps Duras' character entranced with this mysterious man until her death years later in France.

If you like the book, look for Arnaud's film version of "The Lover" which starred Jane March and Tony Leung.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Compelling Novel of Memory, Eroticism and Yearning, March 23, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The North China Lover: A Novel (Paperback)

In 1984, Marguerite Duras won the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary award, for her short novel, "The Lover". That novel told the simple story of an adolescent French girl living in Vietnam in the 1930s. She meets an older Chinese man who becomes her lover. It is a sparely written novel, shifting in time and narrative perspective, often difficult to follow. It is also a novel charged with memory, yearning and erotic feeling.

"The North China Lover", written several years later and published in an English edition in 1992, is a kind of extension of the earlier novel, written with much more detail, inhabiting the interstices of "The Lover". Like its precursor, "The North China Lover" tells a powerful tale of love between the twenty-seven year old Chinese man and the barely teen-aged girl whom he meets on a ferry crossing the Mekong River. Once again, neither the Chinese man nor the girl has a name. However, unlike the earlier novel, many of the other characters are identified and the narrative of "The North China Lover" is considerably more detailed. Originally written as notes for a screenplay of "The Lover", the narrative of "The North China Lover" is episodic, described by one reviewer as having the "grainy, filmic qualities of a documentary." It is also more linear in its story line, easier to follow than the earlier novel, but still characterized by the nouveau roman influences that permeate Marguerite Duras' writing.

"The North China Lover", like its precursor, is a compelling work of memory, eroticism and yearning that, in true Duras style, conflates literary imagination and biography. Read it slowly, languorously savor its eroticism, and let it linger in your mind long after you've closed the book.