The Lover is stunningly beautiful in its simplicity. Set in pre-war Indochina, Duras tells the seemingly banal story of a young French girl and her Chinese lover. However, impregnated with the larger themes of colonialism, race, and poverty, The Lover is a sensuous treatise on what it means to love beyond reason. This is a novel I return to again and again with the same rapture and anticipation that I felt when reading it for the first time.