If you have read anything by Duras, chances are it's The Lover, a slim book set in prewar Indochina (colonial Saigon) where Duras spent her childhood. Though The Lover is about an affair between an adolescent French girl and a Chinese man, it was written when Duras was 70 years old. The sensuous and despairing infatuation and brutal shifts of power between the lovers echo many issues of modern colonialism. The North China Lover is a fuller retelling of this same story. It is written in the luminous, confident, and sparse style for which Duras is known and revered.Far more daring and truthful than any of her other novels, The North China Lover is a fascinating retelling of the dramatic experiences of Duras's adolescence that shaped her most famous work. Initially conceived as notes toward a screenplay for The Lover, this later novel, written toward the end of her life, emphasizes the tougher aspects of her youth in Indochina and possesses the intimate feel of a documentary.
Both shocking and enthralling, the story Duras tells is so powerfully imagined (or remembered) that it . . . lingers like a strong perfume (Publishers Weekly). Hailed by the French critics as a return to the Duras of the great books and the great days, it is a mature and complex rendering of a formative period in the author's life.