Marguerite Duras has been one of the most popular and widely read writers not only in France, but throughout the reading world for almost half a century. “The colors of the East and the problems of the West, the intensity of emotions and the cold of loneliness - these are the poles that create tension in the prose of this famous writer.” “The Lover” is the pinnacle of Marguerite Duras’s work. In France, this novel was a bestseller in the 80s, for which the writer was awarded the Goncourt Prize. The film based on the novel was shown on television more than once. “You can’t create desire. Either a woman has it or she doesn’t. You see it at first sight - or you understand that it is not there and never was. You can immediately feel a woman's sexual attractiveness or lack thereof. And this also came to me even before knowledge.”