The Lover
In 1929 a French schoolgirl of fifteen crosses the Mekong on the ferry in a man's fedora and worn gold shoes, and a wealthy Chinese man watching from a black limousine offers her a lift into Saigon. They begin meeting in a room in the Chinese quarter while her ruined mother and violent elder brother take what they can from the arrangement. Written at seventy from photographs of a childhood already put into fiction twice, and given the Goncourt.
Open The Lover in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.
Lineage
- reworks ↑ The Sea Wall
- ↓ The North China Lover
Attributes
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Conflict
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 72% · 15 shared
- 56% · 11 shared
- 55% · 12 shared
- 55% · 11 shared
- 52% · 12 shared
- 52% · 12 shared