A selection of her books has recently been published in an Everyman’s Library edition, with an introduction by the novelist Rachel Kushner. For Duras, who seemed to sample from every tragedy the world could concoct, it manifests in tone. She’d bring a scene to life and then pan out, hovering over it as if it were a photograph. A starker, sadder picture of the affair emerges in her private papers, where she wrote about it first, and with venom. In “The Lover,” the older man has no name, but his skin smells like honey.

Source: New York Times November 21, 2017 19:30 UTC