In The North China Lover, Marguerite Duras rewrites a story she has told over and over, most notably in her 1984 novel The Lover. She has never told it better than here.

Replete with haunting images of forbidden passion, familial violence, hatred and love, The North China Lover strikes an emotional chord that Duras' other works have sought to destroy. Known for alternating between first-person and third-person narration, Duras deliberately distances readers from her characters. Their emotions appear on the page but are never shared. Yet by maintaining the third-person voice throughout this autobiographical confession, Duras forges a new connection, one that is rewarding and deeply affecting.

The novel began as notes for the screenplay Duras was to write for French director Jean-Jacques Annaud's film adaptation of The Lover, now at area theaters. It developed into a story of its own when she was replaced by another writer after a falling-out with Annaud. Whether or not Duras published this book in retaliation (which seems likely, considering its cinematic quality), what she has created far surpasses Annaud's film and the novel on which it is based.

Duras illuminates the wretched poverty of her family in 1930 French Indochina, the violence they suffered at the hands of her opium-addicted brother and the passion that threatened to consume her at 14 when she embarked on a scandalous affair with a 27-year-old Chinese man. She intensifies the already concentrated sensuality of both the book and film versions of The Lover. She lays bare her incestuous relationship with her younger brother, Paulo—a relationship she only hinted at in The Lover. But the main difference dwells in the explanation behind her affair with "the Chinese," as she refers to her lover.

In both the film and the earlier novel, it is the wealth of the Chinese man that propels her into his arms. She trades her body for money—enough to pay off her brother Pierre's opium debts and to buy them passage back to France on an oceanliner. The possibility that she may love him is only entertained at the end as she watches him watch her sail away.

In The North China Lover, "the child," as Duras refers to herself, seems motivated less by money than by desire. Throughout the narrative, she questions her feelings, testing their true depth. Their relationship, while still based on power, is complicated by the intensity of their emotions. Much more a tragic love story than The Lover, this novel reveals the depth of Duras' love for the Chinese-a love that continues to sustain and influence her work.

Duras further eroticizes that love through the film-like quality of her writing style, which transforms the reader into a voyeur. "She isn't alone in the picture anymore. He is there. Beside her," Duras writes. "He gently rolls onto that skinny, virgin body. And as he slowly covers it with his own body, without touching it yet, the camera might leave the bed; it might veer toward the window, might stop there at the drawn blinds."

This cinematic style lends credence to the belief that Duras wrote The North China Lover as a direct affront to Annaud. Heightening such suspicions are the sporadic footnotes advising on the use of lighting, music and casting "if this book is made into a film."

Whatever her motivation, Duras has written an original and powerful book, with the brutal honesty of a black and white documentary.