Robbing a Child

The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein

* Ecstasy, intoxication, healing, trauma, pain, destruction, annihilation.
* "Unchangeable. Impossible. This is the book I most wanted to write, and at the same time, the most difficult for me to understand."
* "This is perhaps Marguerite Duras' most beautiful novel. Confusing and deceptively simple."
Lol V. Stein is married, has left her hometown, has three children, and appears content and happy. After ten years of stable, quiet life, Lol returns to her hometown with her husband. The scene ten years ago, when she was abandoned by her beloved fiancé, has always lingered in Lol's mind. She "hijacks" her friend's boyfriend, just as the calm and casual woman "hijacked" her fiancé at a ball, replaying the events of her youth. _The Rapture of Lol V. Stein_ tells the story of a woman's madness, calm, and relapse of old wounds after a romantic upheaval, revealing her mental state and psychological changes—the recurrence of old love wounds, perhaps never truly healed.
_The Rapture of Lol V. Stein_ is a work in which Duras redefines traditional novel techniques; it is a psychoanalytic novel, a psychological novel.
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1. Marguerite Duras is an internationally renowned modern French writer with a wide readership. Starting with autobiographical writing, she has created a large number of novels, essays, plays, and films. She is a classic author who has entered the public eye, and also a film artist with global influence. The French "Bibliothèque de la Pléiade" has published her complete works, marking her entry into the "literary Pantheon" and establishing her as an immortal representative. Her plays have entered the classic repertoire of the Comédie-Française, and her novels have even been included in the French high school examination syllabus. Duras, with her unique artistic style and refreshing narrative approach, has constructed a milestone in modern narrative art, as the famous French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet said: "Marguerite Duras contains a subversive power in her narrative."
2. "This is perhaps Marguerite Duras' most beautiful novel. Confusing and deceptively simple."
Published in 1964, _The Rapture of Lol V. Stein_ is a work in which Duras changed traditional novel techniques, a psychoanalytic novel, a psychological novel. The protagonist later became a character in many of her works and is an important intertextual clue. It belongs to Duras' "India series" of novels, along with _The Vice-Consul_ (published in 1965) and _India Song_ (published in 1971). It is a work that showcases the writer's style in her prime, with interconnected characters, time, space, and plot, telling stories of love before and after trauma. Duras explores "love—trauma—the unknown realm beyond rationality." Duras is gradually moving away from novels in the traditional sense, with her writing "lacking the usual plot support and traditional narrative discourse more than ever before."
3. _The Rapture of Lol V. Stein_ uses the translation by Mr. Wang Dongliang, recipient of the Lu Xun Literature Prize for Literary Translation. Appended to the book are Mr. Wang Dongliang's essays, "Some Background Material on Lol" and "The Name That Can Be Named Is Not the Constant Name—Translator's Note on the Revised Edition." These two articles provide a detailed and unique analysis of the plot, characters, scenes, writing style of this important Duras novel, its connections to other Duras works (the novels _The Vice-Consul_ and _India Song_, and the film texts _India Song_ and _Woman of the Ganges_), and its crucial position in Duras' creative trajectory.

2026-04-30

上海译文出版社

264

9787580702173