When L'Amant was published in France in 1984 by the prestigious Éditions de Minuit, the book became a literary phenomenon -both for the readers and the critics- that predestined it to receive the Prix Goncourt the same year. If Marguerite Duras (1914-1996) was already a famous and celebrated woman of letters, it is L’Amant that is since considered her masterpiece.

The author recounts her childhood in French Indochina: her family, the crossing of the Mekong River to go to Saigon and the meeting with a rich Chinese man. He is the "lover", more than ten years her senior, who will troubled the young girl and will create in her an excessive passion. An autobiographical account of the awakening of the senses, tinged with a subtle “durasian” emotionality and a scandalous sensuality, L’Amant is at the same time the account of an abandonment and a liberation.

We read this book in the fall of 2021.