Book Review: L’Amant by Marguerite Duras

This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my links, at no extra cost to you. Please read my full disclosure for more information.

“L’Amant” is a classic french book that holds a lot of literary significance as it highlights girlhood, culture, and sexuality. It is also autobiographical although it reads greatly like fiction, which adds to its charm!

“L’Amant” is an autobiography by French writer Marguerite Duras. It is also the first of her The Lover duology. It follows her youth at the French colony in Vietnam where she falls in love with a wealthy and older Chinese-Vietnamese man.

“L’Amant” is very touching and raw in its autobiographical snapshot of Duras’s upbringing.

The writing style itself is very brief, rich, and halting at once.

I feel like Duras never tells you where she is at in her adventure but she already laid the story bare before and so as a reader you’re constantly connecting the dots and puzzling it all together. It’s what makes her narrative compelling. 

“Very early in my life it was too late.” 

“Suddenly, all at once, she knows, knows that he doesn’t understand her, that he never will, that he lacks the power to understand such perverseness. And that he can never move fast enough to catch her.”

⭐⭐⭐⭐