Marguerite Duras

Written in 1944, but first published in 1985, this shows Paris during the Nazi Occupation and the first months of liberation.

Marguerite Duras was one of the leading intellectuals and novelist of post-war France, but her wartime writings were not published in full until after her death. The Wartime Notebooks trace Duras's formative experiences - including her difficult childhood in Indochina and her harrowing wait for her husband's return from Nazi internment - revealing the personal history behind her bestselling novels. The Lover is the best known of these; set in pre-war...

A poor French teenager embarks on a love affair with a wealthy Chinese man in 1929 French colonial Vietnam, defying the boundaries of age, race and class.