A 114-year-old house in the Mekong Delta has become a tourist drawcard for being the home of the title character in Marguerite Duras’ “The Lover.”
The house was built in Sa Dec, a town in southern Dong Thap Province, by a wealthy Chinese businessman in 1895 and repaired in 1917.
French writer Duras grew up in Sa Dec, about 140 kilometers south of Ho Chi Minh City, with her widowed mother and two brothers.
In 1929, when she was 15, Duras began an affair with Huynh Thuy Le, the 27-year-old son of the rich Chinese landowner who then owned the house.
The affair could not withstand the disapproval of Le’s father and before her 18th birthday, Duras left Vietnam for France.
The love affair was the focus of her autobiographical novel “The Lover,” published in French in 1984. Since its first English translation in 1985, “The Lover” has since been released in 43 languages.
“The Lover” won one of France's most prestigious literary awards, the Prix Goncourt, in 1984 and eight years later a film of the same name was released.
The house where Le lived with his father is often called “Lovers’ House” by Sa Dec locals, even though the name on the front fence of 255A Nguyen Hue Street is “Tran Thuy Le Antique House.”
In 2006, the house was restored and opened to visitors. About 500 tourists, mostly French, visit the villa each month, according to the Dong Thap Tourism Managing Center.
Lovers’ House combines Western and Eastern architecture. The Western influence can be seen in the façade of the house and in the Renaissance-style ceiling and balconies. The Eastern influence is evident in the house’s gold-plated interior.
Born in Gia Dinh in 1914 in what was then called Saigon, now HCMC, Duras died in Paris in 1996, after a long literary career. Her first novel was published when she was 28 and she wrote in many genres, including essays, plays, film scripts and journalism.
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