L'Amant de la Chine du Nord (1991) is a novel by Marguerite Duras. It is a retelling of her early Goncourt winning novel L'Amant (The Lover). Back in later 1920s French Indochina, a 15 year old girl and a Chinese man in his 30s have an intense love affair. She is the daughter of a poor French teacher and he a rich heir with a European education and a future in banking. She has never loved anyone other than her younger brother Paulo, whom their mother and Thahn try to protect from their opium-addicted older brother. The Chinese man is enganged to be married to a wealthy Chinese girl.
The lack of characterisation (most of the characters are not even given a name) does not make this novel any less beautiful and sad. Duras draws for her own life and her experiences of colonial life (like the girl in the novel she was born and raised in Indochina herself and seems to have had a Chinese lover when she was 15 herself). The impossible love affair ends when the child goes back to France by boat. Years later, now settled in Paris, she receives a telephone call from the Chinese man who tells her that he never stopped loving her.
Subtletly narrated and sometimes structured as a film script - L'Amant was indeed turned into a movie but Duras did not approve of it and this second version of the novel is most probably a reaction to it - this book is of a rare beauty and, despite its subject matter, utterly unsentimental.
No comments:
Post a Comment