In 1984 the writer and film director Marguerite Duras, celebrated for the screenplay of Alain Resnais\' film Hiroshima Mon Amour, published her novel The Lover. It told the story of Duras\' disturbed childhood in colonial Indo-China and of how she had been sold as a child mistress to a wealthy indigŒne by her own mother. One of her brothers had been a violent pimp and opium addict who stole from the Chinese houseboys. The book made her a national celebrity, earned her a fortune and won the Prix Goncourt. Her mother was alive at the time and Laure Adler recounts how Duras, aged 70, rushed round to the old lady\'s house with an early copy.

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