[In the following review, Otten deems The Lover a “parable of French colonialism.”]

Winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 1984, The Lover was acclaimed as a major literary event and has been translated into all major world languages. Labeled nonfiction, the work repeats autobiographical material already present in The Sea Wall (Un barrage contre le Pacifique, 1950). The narrative presents the life of Saigon in the 1930s under the rule of French colonialism, where the life of the heroine parallels that of Duras, who was born there in 1914. Duras was brought up by her mother after her father's death, had two brothers, left Saigon in 1932, studied mathematics in Paris, and wanted to write. Yet the work cannot be classified as memoir because it is primarily fictional and a parable of French colonialism.

This love story, compared to the world's great tales of passion, is rather simple. A poor middle-class French highschool girl of fifteen becomes the mistress of a rich Chinese, twelve years older than herself, from whom she accepts money. Divided by age and racial and social barriers, they cannot marry but still cling together passionately. The story has a sad ending: he marries a rich girl and she leaves for France. Yet this potentially banal story is fascinating because of Duras's art as a storyteller. The colonial upper class is set off from the gray existence of the natives who struggle for survival amidst corruption, oppression, and human degradation. The heroine considers herself a prostitute. She sometimes loves but later hates her mother. She exchanges banalities with her lover. Yet the story fascinates us because of the revelation of hidden feelings and forgotten events that gradually assume form in the mind of the narrator and of the reader. Written unemotionally, this tale of masters and servants is much like a film scenario where a great variety of images fly by. There is passion, serenity, chatter, tenderness, servility, beauty, despair, abject poverty, rebellion, and dream. Life around the child/woman is full of contrasts and diversity, like the people along the shores of the Mekong. Like the Mekong, everything moves on, forever. Two lovers, separated by time and space, have always been a favorite subject matter for myth. In a humble way, this book is a myth of our time.