"Duras's language and writing shine like crystals."--New Yorker A man--the traveler--arrives in the seaside town of S. Thala with the intent to abandon his present, and instead finds himself abruptly reintroduced to his past. Through his subsequent interactions with "her," the woman to whom he was briefly engaged as a young man over twenty years ago, and "him," the man who walks and keeps watch over "her," the traveler is soon drawn...