Yann Andréa Steiner

Fifty years have passed since the young girl in the autobiographical The Lover discovered passion with an older man. Now, Marguerite Duras has written a homage to a new lover, Yann Andrea, a man thirty years her junior, who over the past twelve years has lifted her from the depths of despair, illness, and alcoholism, and whose devotion has enabled her to create some of her best-known works, including The Lover. In this tender memoir of an improbable liaison, Duras recounts the circumstances of her first meeting with Yann Andrea, and how his letters to her, which she at first neglected to answer, led to an invitation to her home, where he has remained ever since. His interest in her work leads her to reexamine the themes that have compelled her - the anarchic nature of desire, the tragedies of childhood, and the holocaust - and look back over her life and career. Embedded in these recollections is a stunning tale of forbidden love between two children, mismatched in age, who spend a summer by the sea that will ever after affect their lives. At once poetic and accessible, Yann Andrea Steiner is vintage Duras.