The Lover

An international best-seller with more than one million copies in print and a winner of France's Prix Goncourt, The Lover has been acclaimed by critics all over the world since its first publication in 1984. Set in the prewar Indochina of Marguerite Duras's childhood, this is the haunting tale of a tumultuous affair between an adolescent French girl and her Chinese lover. In spare yet luminous prose, Duras evokes life on the margins of Saigon in the waning days of France's colonial empire, and its representation in the passionate relationship between two unforgettable outcasts. Long unavailable in hardcover, this edition of The Lover includes a new introduction by Maxine Hong Kingston that looks back at Duras's world from an intriguing new perspective--that of a visitor to Vietnam today.

A spellbinding novel celebrating Indigenous sensuality; the first erotic novel written by an Indigenous woman in French When it was first published in Quebec, The Lover, The Lake was heralded as the first erotic novel written by an Indigenous woman in French. Today, as it is translated into English for the first time, author Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau would rather call it a celebration of sensuality, another first. At a time when Indigenous peoples were being dispossessed of their land and history as well as their relationship to the body, the love explored by Wabougouni and Gabriel is an act of defiance. Their intimate connection plays out on the shores of Lake Abitibi in an affair as turbulent and unfathomable as the lake itself. "The aim here is to break free of the bonds of wounds the priests' abuse has left on our bodies and souls, wounds linked to loss--of land, of intimate spaces, of identity both as an individual and community member, of sexual identity, of delight in the body, of innocence and the uncomplicated nature of lovemaking. My hope is that this novel will serve to unearth the seed of joy buried deep in our culture, still profoundly alive . . . The Lover, the Lake shows us that we are not just suffering and victims: we can also be pleasure." -- Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau, from the prologue

"An absolutely prime slice of Scandicrime . . . the writer channels her professional expertise into a noteworthy domestic thriller" Barry Forshaw, FT "Having hit a bull's-eye with . . . The Therapist . . . Helene Flood repeats the trick with another twisty tale of domestic goings-on . . . teasing and pleasing the reader till the very last page" Sunday Times Crime Club "The Lover is taut, clever and irresistible" Anna Bailey "A wonderful storyteller" Chris Whitaker Is it worse to deceive to your husband or the police? Rikke is lying to them both. But how many lies can she get away with? When her upstairs neighbour Jørgen is found murdered, she's questioned alongside her husband. How can she admit that she and Jørgen were having an affair? Or explain to the police the complexity of her feelings? The hint of relief that he's dead. And what would they say if they knew she used a spare key to enter his apartment the morning after he was killed? Rikke knows she can't hide the evidence of the affair from the police. And if she's caught in her lie, suspicion will turn to her. With her perfect family life threatening to unravel, Rikke realises that finding the killer is the only way to put herself in the clear. So long as the killer doesn't get to her first. Praise for The Therapist "Creepy, compelling and very well written" Harriet Tyce "Wonderfully creepy, twisty and compelling" Karen Hamilton "Masterfully paced and hauntingly written" Anna Bailey "Gets under your skin" Jo Spain "I couldn't put it down" Sarah Ward "A marvellously assured debut thriller" Irish Times. "A striking debut" Spectator Translated from the Norwegian by Alison McCullough

How does one talk about love? Is it even possible to describe something at once utterly mundane and wholly transcendent, that has the power to consume our lives completely, while making us feel part of something infinitely larger than ourselves? Taking a unique approach to this age-old problem, the nameless narrator of David Levithan's The Lover's Dictionary constructs the story of a relationship as a dictionary. Through these sharp entries, he provides an intimate window into the great events and quotidian trifles of coupledom, giving us an indelible and deeply moving portrait of love in our time.

A husband seeks his wife's lover who is lost in the turbulence of Israel's Yom Kippur War. As the story of his quest unfolds and grows in intensity, the main protagonists are drawn into the search and transformed by it: through the different perspective of husband, wife, teenage daughter, young Arab emerges a complex picture of the uneasy present, the tension between generations, between Israel's past and future, between Jews and Arabs. The Lover was A.B. Yehoshua's first novel and immediately brought him international recognition. It is brilliant, compassionate and highly original and as accomplished as all his later works.

Published for the first time in English, the debut novel of Marguerite Duras—renowned author of The Lover and The War—is the story of a family’s moral reckoning and a daughter’s fall from grace Marguerite Duras rose to global stardom with her erotic masterpiece The Lover (L’Amant), which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt, has over a million copies in print in English, has been translated into forty-three languages, and was adapted into a canonical film in 1992. While almost all of Duras’s novels have been translated into English, her debut The Impudent Ones (Les Impudents) has been a glaring exception—until now. Fans of Duras will be thrilled to discover the germ of her bold, vital prose and signature blend of memoir and fiction in this intense and mournful story of the Taneran family, which introduces Duras’s classic themes of familial conflict, illicit romance, and scandal in the sleepy suburbs and southwest provinces of France. Duras’s great gift was her ability to bring vivid and passionate life to characters with whom society may not have sympathized, but with whom readers certainly do. With storytelling that evokes in equal parts beauty and brutality, The Impudent Ones depicts the scalding effects of seduction and disrepute on the soul of a young French girl. Including an essay on the story behind The Impudent Ones by Jean Vallier—biographer of the late Duras—which contextualizes the origins of Duras’s debut novel, this one-of-a-kind publishing endeavor will delight established Duras fans and a new generation of readers alike.