SOURCE: “Saigon Mon Amour,” in The New York Review of Books, Vol. XXXII, No. 11, June 27, 1985, pp. 11-12.

In the following review of The Lover, Annan examines Duras's motivations in the writing of the novella, as well as the book's phenomenal popular success.

Marguerite Duras is very much a member of the old French avant-garde. She published her first novel in 1943, wrote her first film script—Hiroshima mon amour—in 1959, and directed her first film in 1969. In 1968 she was a senior member of the writers' and students' revolutionary committee. So it is quite surprising that her latest novel was a runaway success in France last year, French readers being notoriously anxious to be on with the new. L'Amant appeared in the dead holiday month of August and is barely long enough to last through an afternoon on the beach. All the same, it quickly sold 60,000 copies and headed the...